Maximum length just over 50 cm. In life, the upper part of this fish is of a red or salmon colour, marked with brown blotches (as shown in the drawing, together with the three barbels, misnamed ‘beards’). So it is easy to identify. But it and its close relations (of which I mention only the four-bearded rockling, Rhinonemus cimbrius (Linnaeus), since it occurs on both sides of the Atlantic) have constituted an intractable, albeit trivial, problem for taxonomists, who have all but buried the small creatures under a mass of competing scientific names. All the layman need know is that the rocklings all have a very low first dorsal fin (just visible in the drawing), that they may have three, four or five barbels and that they have no commercial importance on either side of the North Atlantic.
