Introduction
In a recent visit to the Fugang fishing port of eastern Taiwan, the first author purchased a large, black fish specimen
(305 mm SL, Fig. 1A) awaiting sale in the auction. This specimen proved to be a male flashlight fish
(Anomalopidae) of Protoblepharon, a genus characterized by having 21 gill rakers (as 4 plates and 17 rod-shaped
rakers) on the first arch, a relatively small rotatable light organ, no postorbital papillae, and a very small gap
between the lacimal and nasal for passage of the stalk. However, it differs in many aspects from the only congener
Protoblepharon rosenblatti, a species described by Baldwin et al. (1997) based on a single 220 mm SL specimen
collected from the Cook Islands in the south central Pacific Ocean at a depth of 274 m. Protoblepharon rosenblatti
was mentioned by the latter authors subsequently (Paxton & Johnson, 1999; Randall, 2005), but no additional
information was added to that in the original description. The newly collected specimen represents the second
specimen and the first record for of the genus in North Pacific Ocean.