Flounder, Summer

It has long been known that flatfishes are generally dark on a dark bottom and pale on a pale one. Perhaps the summer flounder is the most variable in color of all our local species and the one which adapts its pattern the most closely to that of the ground on which it lies. It is white below and of some shade of brown, gray, or drab above, like most flatfishes. But it can assume a wide range of tints, from nearly white on white sand through various hues of gray, blue, green, orange, pink, and brown to almost black. Its upper surface is variegated with pale and dark, as a rule, with the pattern fine or coarse according to the bottom, and it may or may not be marked with small eyespots of a darker tint of the general ground color.