Dr. James W. Orr, an ichthyologist at NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, was recently recognized for his contributions to ichthyology. A new genus of an extinct handfish was named in his honor: Orrichthys for the species Orrichthys longimanus.
Species of the handfish family (Brachionichthyidae) are now found in waters off Australia and Tasmania, where with their long paired fins, they "walk" on the ocean bottom like tetrapods.
The species was described and named by Drs. Giorgio Carnevale of the Universita' de Pisa and Ted Pietsch of the University of Washington in a recent issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (Zool. J. Linnean Soc., 2010, 160:621–647).
