These fishes are found in the coastal northern Pacific Ocean from Japan to California.

Blepsias was first proposed as a genus by the French zoologist Georges Cuvier with Trachinus cirrhosus, which had originally been described in 1814 by Peter Simon Pallas from Kamchatka, as the type species.

[3] The recognized species in this genus are:[4] Blepsias has a spiny preoperculum, a compressed head, with armoured cheeks and palatine teeth.

[4] Blepsias sculpins are found in the North Pacific and the adjacent Arctic waters from Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk north to the Chukchi and Bering seas to central California.

[6] They are demersal fishes of shallow, even intertidal, waters where there is algae.