Dictionary:

sablefish

  (sā'bəl-fĭsh')

A dark-colored marine food fish (Anoplopoma fimbria) of North American Pacific waters. Also called black cod.

Anoplopoma fimbria

FAMILY

Anoplopomatidae

TAXONOMY

Anoplopoma fimbria Pallas, 1811, San Francisco, United States. Family Anoplopomatidae placed either within suborder Hexagrammoidei or suborder Anoplopomatoidei.

OTHER COMMON NAMES

English: Blackcod, Alaska blackcod, coalfish.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Sablefishes have separate dorsal fins of equal size and a forked tail fin on a streamlined body of gray to black color. Sablefishes grow up to 42 in (107 cm) in length and over 125 lb (57 kg) in weight.

DISTRIBUTION

Deep, offshore waters of the North Pacific, from Baja California (Mexico), to the Bering Sea, and across to southern Japan. Sablefishes range thousands of miles during their lives and occur at depths of over a thousand feet, abundant down to 3,000 ft (914 m). Their young occur in more inshore waters.

HABITAT

Open, deep ocean water of the North Pacific. They often feed near the bottom in association with deep-sea fishes like rattails and grenadiers.

BEHAVIOR

Sablefishes swim at relaxed speeds and approach and school with fishes of other species, sometimes as a prelude to a sideways lunge for a head-first swallowing of the unsuspecting prey. They cannibalize their young when they are abundant in inshore waters.

FEEDING ECOLOGY AND DIET

Sablefishes eat crustaceans, worms, small fishes, and any larger fishes they can capture, which can include salmon almost as long as the sablefish.

REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY

Spawning occurs during winter, and the pelagic eggs float in deep water of about 3,000 ft (914 m) where seawater remains constantly cold. Larvae hatch before functional eyes, jaws, or gut have formed and remain deep until absorbing their large yolk. Larvae with large pectoral fins grow in surface waters during spring.

CONSERVATION STATUS

Not listed by the IUCN. Heavily fished through the last century by American, Canadian, Russian, and Japanese longliners and trawlers, sablefishes are now recognized as a depleted species. Catch quotas are now a small fraction of the peak landings that occurred during the middle of the last century. Russian landings from the Bering Sea were reported to have been 38 million pounds (17,000 metric tons) during 1967. Canadian landings at that time were lowest, around one million pounds (454 metric tons).

SIGNIFICANCE TO HUMANS

Sablefishes have been valued greatly as a smoked fish (smoked Alaska blackcod). Their flesh is quite oily. Native North Americans sundried the sablefish. Because they adapt well to living in tanks and net pens, blackcod are being developed as a high-value species for diversification of salmon farms.

[SAY-bl-fihsh] Also known as Alaska cod, black cod and butterfish, the sablefish is actually neither a cod nor a butterfish. It ranges in size from 1 to 10 pounds and is found in deep waters off the Pacific Northwest coast. The white flesh of the sablefish is soft-textured and mild-flavored. Its high fat content makes it an excellent fish for smoking and it's commonly marketed as smoked black cod. Sablefish is available year-round whole, as well as in fillets and steaks. It can be prepared in a variety of ways including baking, broiling or frying. See also fish.

Black cod
Drawing by Dr Tony Ayling
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Actinopterygii Order: Perciformes Family: Nototheniidae Genus: Notothenia Species: N. microlepidota
Binomial name
Notothenia microlepidota Hutton, 1875

The black cod or smallscaled cod, Notothenia microlepidota, is a marine cod icefish in the genus Notothenia with distribution ranging from southern New Zealand to sub-Antarctic seas, although they have also been fished off the Great Australian Bight, Chile, and round the Falkland Islands, on rocky reefs. Their length is between 25 and 70 cm, and they may weigh up to 3 kg.

The juveniles are silvery in appearance with a pronounced tail fork. The adult has a less pronounced fork in the tail, with body colors of silver, yellow and reddish-brown. The scales are very small, and there are two lateral lines which have a considerable overlap.

Being a sub-Antarctic species, the black cod has special adaptations such as antifreeze proteins in its blood, as well as adipose tissues to offset its lack of swim bladders, giving it neutral buoyancy.

It should be noted that sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) is occasionally called black cod as well, but it is not a true cod. In New Zealand, Maori Cod is also known as "black cod".

The black cod is unrelated to the true cod, and gets its name from the fact that it is a food fish. It is tasty to eat, and is commercially fished.

References

• "Notothenia microlepidota". FishBase. Ed. Ranier Froese and Daniel Pauly. May 2006 version. N.p.: FishBase, 2006.
• Tony Ayling & Geoffrey Cox, Collins Guide to the Sea Fishes of New Zealand, (William Collins Publishers Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand 1982) ISBN 0-00-216987-8

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