lives eighty years, fished nearly to nothing

Size
Length: 30–40 cm, Weight: 1–2 kg
Lifespan
100–150 years
Diet
Fish, squid and crustaceans. Lives in deep, cold water from 500–1,500 metres depth, often on underwater mountains and seamounts. A deep sea slow-poke, living where light never reaches and water is near freezing.
Habitat
Deep, cold water from 500 metres down to 1,500 metres, often on underwater mountains and seamounts. The fish of the abyssal depths, living where light never reaches and water is near freezing.
Range
Worldwide. In New Zealand, found in deep, cold water around the South Island, particularly on the Chatham Rise, Challenger Plateau and off the West Coast. Most common on underwater mountains and seamounts from 500–1,500 metres depth.
Endemism
Native
Main Threats
Commercial overfishing is the primary threat, with populations collapsing before anyone realised how slow they grew. Habitat loss from bottom trawling damaging seamounts. Slow reproduction rates.
Population
At Risk - Declining. Heavily overfished in the 1980s and 1990s, with many populations collapsing before anyone realised how slow they grew. Numbers are a fraction of what they once were. Recovery will take decades, if it happens at all.
Conservation Status
At Risk - Declining
The tragic celebrity of the deep sea. It became famous for all the wrong reasons. The orange roughy is a medium-sized deep-bodied fish. It has a large head, a big mouth and rough spiny scales. The colour is bright almost fluorescent orange-red on the back. This fades to a paler orange on the belly. Orange fins and large dark eyes are adapted for seeing in the dim light of the deep. It looks like it belongs on a coral reef. Not in the dark water of the seamounts. It is the slowest of the slow. Orange roughy do not reach sexual maturity until at least 20 years old. They can live for over 100 years. They spawn infrequently. Populations grow at a glacial pace. This life history served them well in stable, predator-free depths of the ocean. It did not serve them well when the trawlers arrived. A fish that was not built for the modern world. Discovered in the 1970s, by the 1980s a massive fishery had developed. The fish were delicious. Firm white flaky and mild. The public could not get enough. Trawlers swept the seamounts. They scooped up slow-moving, slow-growing roughy. Within a decade, populations had collapsed. A century of growth, wiped out in ten years. Now the fishery is a shadow of what it was. Orange roughy is a cautionary tale. To eat an orange roughy is to eat a tragedy. The fish was here for a hundred years. It was wiped out in a decade. It is a bright orange warning on the dinner plate. The trawler drags the seamount. The net fills with orange. The roughy come up, century-old fish. Dragged from the dark. Dumped on the deck. Frozen, shipped, sold. The diner does not know how old the fish is. The diner does not care. The orange roughy does not know either. It just wanted to swim in the dark. In Māori tradition, the Orange Roughy has no widely recorded name. This is because it was unknown to traditional fisheries. It lives too deep. No waka or net could reach such water. Today it is the fish of the deep sea scandal. It made the fishermen rich and the environmentalists angry. It is a bright, orange reminder that the ocean has limits. Even in the deepest, darkest places.