Saithe

Migrating fish with underbite

The saithe is a large, muscular codfish that lives in shoals. It is related to cod, whiting, haddock and other codfish, that are common in supermarkets and restaurants. Unlike most other codfish, the saithe does not have a whisker-like barbel, but it does have a characteristic underbite that becomes more pronounced as it ages.

The saithe is what you might call a migratory fish! A newly hatched saithe is carried by ocean currents to rocky coastal areas, and stays in shallow water. The juvenile saithe feeds on zooplankton, which it sifts out of the water using its gill rakers – a kind of comb that sits along the fish’s gill arches. As the saithe grows larger, it moves out to the open sea, where it lives in shoals.

Lay eight million eggs

Saithe hunt together by surrounding schools of small fish and pushing them towards the surface. When this happens, the water almost looks like it is boiling, as the entire surface bubbles. The food consists mainly of herring and sprat. The saithe spawning season runs from January to May, and a large female can lay up to eight million eggs. In the first five years, the saithe grows 10 centimetres a year.