Deep Sea News

When you see frozen fish sticks, think cod; when you eyeball the seafood salad at Subway, think pollock. Deep-sea fishes are all around us, but we know very little about them. For example, did you know cod have a bioluminescent anus? And they cannibalize their young? If not, please, read on.

Deep-sea cod (family Gadidae) are “one of the most important families of fishes in the deep-sea”. Their deep siblings include pollock and hake. Pollock is what they use to make fake crab legs in the Subway seafood salad. It’s packaged as sarimi, a strange white Asian boloney. Sarimi fishermen catch pollock with bottom trawls off Alaska, and press the meat into a white pressed sausage stained with bright colors in the sliced meat section at the Vietnamese grocery. Check it out sometime.

Researchers at JAMSTEC have recently added another hydrothermal vent type, the blue smoker!