The fish with the rude name

140212. Cape Town. Line fishermen are seen fishing near Simon's Town. The majority of traditional line fishermen in South Africa entered 2014 without the legal right to continue their operations. This comes after the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Daff) denied their applications to have their rights renewed. Old rights expired at midnight on New Year’s Eve 2013. Picture Henk Kruger/Cape Argus

140212. Cape Town. Line fishermen are seen fishing near Simon's Town. The majority of traditional line fishermen in South Africa entered 2014 without the legal right to continue their operations. This comes after the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Daff) denied their applications to have their rights renewed. Old rights expired at midnight on New Year’s Eve 2013. Picture Henk Kruger/Cape Argus

Published Sep 23, 2015

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The good news for a particularly aggressive type of Australian fish is that it has finally been recognised by science and given a name. The bad news is the name itself: blue bastard.

The fish got the genus name Plectorhinchus but was saddled with the species name caeruleonothus – the latinate version of the nickname given to it by anglers, who noted that it was blue when adult and “a bastard to catch”.

Jeff Johnson of the Queensland Museum, who discovered it was a separate species, convinced the journal Zootaxa that the name was “quintessentially Australian”. – The Independent

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