Pacific Glasseye

How it lives

The Pacific glasseye lives over and among rocky bottom. It is reported to feed at night, and little else is known about how it lives.

Where it normally lives

Tropical Indian and Pacific oceans; in the eastern Pacific from Santa Catalina Island, California, and Isla Guadalupe, Baja California, to Panama, with records in the Gulf of California and at the Galapagos.

The Pacific glasseye lives across the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans, north to Yonaguni-jima Island in Japan. In the eastern Pacific its range runs from Santa Catalina Island and Isla Guadalupe, off Baja California, south to Panama, with records in the Gulf of California and at the Galapagos. It lives from the tide line to about 985 feet. Until 2017, scientists lumped it with the Atlantic glasseye into 1 species thought to live worldwide.

Range source: Love and colleagues, 2021 checklist of Pacific coast fishes · Mexican Fish.com · FishBase

In California

On November 3, 2026, Pat Webster photographed a Pacific glasseye at 30 feet in the dive park at Avalon, on Catalina Island. Chelsea Mayer, who spotted the fish, saw 2 more.

The species has turned up in California before. A snorkeler photographed one along the rocks of Mission Bay in San Diego on August 1, 2022, in about 72 degree water, and the observer reported that Harold Walker of Scripps Institution of Oceanography confirmed the ID. The 2021 checklist of Pacific coast fishes by Milton Love and colleagues lists Santa Catalina Island as the northern end of the range. An angler also caught a likely Pacific glasseye at the Cabrillo Mole in Avalon in December 2017, but it was released before anyone could confirm the ID.