page_title: Pacific hagfish
section_title: Diet
hierarchical_section_title: Pacific hagfish / Diet
caption_attribution_description: English: Pacific hagfish (Eptatretus stoutii) in a hole at 150 meters depth. Latitude 37 58 N., Longitude 123 27 W. Location: California, Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary.
context_page_description: The Pacific hagfish is a species of hagfish. It lives in the mesopelagic to abyssal Pacific ocean, near the ocean floor. It is a jawless fish and has a body plan that resembles early paleozoic fish. They are able to excrete prodigious amounts of slime in self-defense.
context_section_description: While Pacific hagfish likely take polychaete worms and other invertebrates from the sea floor, they are also known to enter dead, dying or inhibited large fish through the mouth or the anus, and feed on their viscera. The Pacific hagfish's skin can absorb nutrients, which has been demonstrated in the laboratory by showing the passage of amino acids through hagfish skin.
  The diet of other hagfish species includes shrimps, hermit crabs, cephalopods, brittlestars, bony fishes, sharks, birds and whale flesh, but specific information about the Pacific hagfish is lacking.
caption: Pacific hagfish at 150 metres' depth, Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, California.
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