References Table of Contents Home Coloration in fishes is primarily due to skin pigments. There are many exceptional features in the color array of fishes. One of these is color uniformity due to an excess of pigment as found in melanistic fishes.
Melanism is the occurrence of individuals that are black they have an excess of the pigment melanin.
During our yearly examination of several hundred fish collections from Oklahoma waters we found many fish with varying degrees of melanism. Both gars were released after they were photographed. I thank Phil Pigg and Gary Bird for helping with the field collection of the gars. The Oxford dictionary of natural history.