Distribution

This extremely well known and abundant Atlantic species has been recorded in all regions of the North Atlantic from the coasts of Norway and Greenland to the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands, while in the South Atlantic it has been taken off the French Congo, South Africa and Uruguay. However, in the Pacific it has been reported from only two localities, off Chile (Holthuis, 1952) and from Challenger Station 159, south of Australia (Hansen, 1903: 59). Though Gurney and Lebour (1940) state that an acanthosoma larva from Terra Nova Station 251 (54° 2′ S. 177° 0′ W, south of New Zealand) "seems to be indistinguishable from S. arcticus", adults of this species have not been recorded from the New Zealand area until now.

Sund (1920) found S. arcticus to be the commonest species of the genus in the North Atlantic and stated that it had virtually the same distribution in that ocean as the genus Pasiphaea. Also Ekman (1953) mentions that S. arcticus in the Atlantic is one of the few bathypelagic species which are truly cosmopolitan with regard to temperature. By this he means that the species is found in equatorial as well as in both north and south cold-water regions, though it might avoid waters in the highest latitudes.

S. arcticus has almost invariably been taken in Cook Strait in association with an abundant bathypelagic Pasiphaea, very similar to, but distinct from, the North Atlantic P. sivado (Risso).