The oilfish, Ruvettus pretiosus Cocco, 1829, is an oceanic, benthopelagic species, found world wide in tropical and warm temperate seas, generally living at depths between 100 and 700 m in the open ocean (Nakamura and Parin 1993) . It lives in pairs or solitary and migrates far offshore (Anonymous 1994 , Nakamura and Parin 2001 , Maguire et al. 2006) . It feeds on variety of fish, crustaceans, and squids. The flesh is very oily contains a strong purgative substance that may cause diarrhoea if

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... o much is eaten (Nakamura and Parin 1993). The occurrence of the oilfish in the Mediterranean basin was recorded by Kaya and Bilecenoğlu (1999) at the coast of Turkey. The species was also successively reported from the Italian coast at the Adriatic Sea (Bettoso and Dulčić 1999). In this short note, the first record of the oilfish, R. pretiosus, in Libyan waters is reported herewith. The specimen of R. pretiosus was caught in March 2004, by a commercial bottom trawl, 7 nautical miles off the coast of Benghazi, southern Mediterranean, Libya (32°06´N; 20°03´E; Fig. 1 ), at the depth of approximately 65 m. The fish was frozen on board by the fisherman. Once in the laboratory, the specimen was photographed (Fig. 2 ) and identified based on Nakamura and Parin (1993), and is now deposited in Natural Museum of