Monte Desert Monte Desert The Monte Desert is a South American ecoregion, lying entirely within Argentina and covering approximately the submontane areas of Catamarca, La Rioja, San Juan, San Luis and Mendoza Provinces, plus the western half of La Pampa Province and the extreme north of Río Negro Province. The desert lies southeast of the Atacama Desert in Chile, north of the larger Patagonian Desert, east of the Andes and west of the Sierra de Córdoba. The delineations between the Monte Desert, the Atacama Desert, and the Patagonian Desert are not exact and the desert seems to be more-or-less continuous with the
Patagonian toothfish sea bass" before settling on "Chilean sea bass". In 1994, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted "Chilean Seabass" as an "alternative market name" for Patagonian toothfish, and in 2013 for Antarctic toothfish. In the UK, the approved commercial designations for "D. eleginoides" and "D. mawsoni" are "icefish" and "toothfish". This has created some confusion as there is a genuine "icefish" ("Champsocephalus gunnari") caught in subantarctic waters, which does not resemble toothfish in any way. Patagonian toothfish spawn in deep water (around 1,000m) during the austral winter, producing pelagic eggs and larvae. Larvae switch to a demersal habitat at