Anglerfish in the Shallow Waters

Tuesday, 27 March 2007

An Anglerfish a bottom dwelling fish found in the water depths of about 2 to 500 meters. They have the tendency to inhabit in the bottom sandy, gravel part of the water. Mostly, they live in areas where water is too deep for enough sunlight to penetrate, these are the ones belonging to the ceratioidea. However, there some types like the frogfishes belonging to the antennariidae family and goosefishes belonging to the lophiidae family that finds it perfectly to reside on shallow waters. They are the predators to juvenile fishes including the dogfish, skate, cod, haddock, and sandeels. The Anglerfishes are prominently dominant in countries like United Kingdom, the Atlantic, the English Channel and the Northern Sea.

Anglerfishes are easily identified because of their massive head, with grotesque features. They have humungous mouth with sharp teeth comparable to a piranha’s teeth. The anglerfish is able to extend both its jaw and its stomach to an enormous size, allowing it to swallow the prey to up to twice as large as its entire body. They have a flat white belly, although, the coloration can vary from green-brown to ash gray with varying marks on it. The head and the body have are indistinctly outlined. The gill lines are on the lower part of the pectoral fins. The pectoral and ventral fins are so clearly aligned so as to perform the functions of feet, the fish being enabled to move, or rather to walk, on the lower part of the sea, where it basically hides itself in the sand or in between the webby parts of the sea-weed.

Due to the scarcity of male anglerfishes the mating process becomes incredibly difficult. This is due to the fact that when male anglerfishes are born, they are unable to feed on their own because they do not have digestive system. To survive, the baby male anglerfish must quickly find a female anglerfish using his sensitive olfactory organs that allow him to detect any chemical or set of chemicals produced by a living organism that transmits a message to other members of the same species. (the pheromones). The female anglerfish has this substance thereby using the olfactory organ, the young anglerfish would be able to detect the presence of a female one. Once located, the young male anglerfish will bite her flank and the flank releases a chemical substance that catalyzes (in this case, accelerate) chemical reaction. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of organ that makes gametes therefore releasing sperm in response to the female’s hormones afterwhich produces egg.

Breeding usually occurs in the spring to the early summer. The egg mass usually takes into formation of large, very transparent gelatinous substance that is approximately 2 to 3 feet in width and 25 to 30 feet in length.

Generally, since these are difficult to capture, mass consumption is very rare as it costs highly expensive. So expensive that the liver alone when sold will cost you roughly a month electric bill.