''Merlangius merlangus'', commonly known as Whiting or merling, is an important food fish in the eastern North

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and the northern

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

, western

Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages *Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...

, and

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...

. In Anglophonic countries outside the Whiting's natural range, the name "whiting" has been applied to various other species of fish.

Description

''Merlangius merlangus'' has three dorsal fins with a total of 30 to 40 soft rays and two anal fins with 30 to 35 soft rays. The body is long and the head small and a chin barbel, if present, is very small. This fish can reach a maximum length of about . The colour may be yellowish-brown, greenish or dark blue, the flanks yellowish grey or white and the belly silvery. There is a distinctive black blotch near the base of each pectoral fin.

Distribution and habitat

Whiting are native to the northeastern Atlantic Ocean. Their range extends from the southeastern

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and Iceland to Scandinavia, the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from ...

, the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian ...

, Portugal, the

, the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea ; tr, Ege Denizi ( Greek: Αιγαίο Πέλαγος: "Egéo Pélagos", Turkish: "Ege Denizi" or "Adalar Denizi") is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans ...

, the

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and parts of the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

. They occur on sand, mud and gravel seabeds at depths down to about . In 2014, their

conservation status The conservation status of a group of organisms (for instance, a species) indicates whether the group still exists and how likely the group is to become extinct in the near future. Many factors are taken into account when assessing conservation ...

was classified at vulnerable in the Baltic Sea.

Uses

Until the late 20th century, Whiting was a cheap fish, regarded as food for the poor or for pets. The general decline in fish stocks means it is now more highly valued. The other fish that have been given the name Whiting are mostly also edible fish. Several species of the drum, or croaker, family ( Sciaenidae) are also called Whiting, among them the northern kingfish (''Menticirrhus saxatilis''). Whiting was used as a fringe plot point and mise-en-scène in the acclaimed

crime drama Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and comb ...

television series A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed be ...

'' The Wire''.

Parasites

Whiting and related other Gadidae species are plagued by parasites. These include the cod worm ('' Lernaeocera branchialis''), a

copepod Copepods (; meaning "oar-feet") are a group of small crustaceans found in nearly every freshwater and saltwater habitat. Some species are planktonic (inhabiting sea waters), some are benthic (living on the ocean floor), a number of species have ...

crustacean that clings to the

gill A gill () is a respiratory organ that many aquatic organisms use to extract dissolved oxygen from water and to excrete carbon dioxide. The gills of some species, such as hermit crabs, have adapted to allow respiration on land provided they ar ...

s or the fish and metamorphoses into a plump,

sinusoidal A sine wave, sinusoidal wave, or just sinusoid is a mathematical curve defined in terms of the '' sine'' trigonometric function, of which it is the graph. It is a type of continuous wave and also a smooth periodic function. It occurs often i ...

, wormlike body, with a coiled mass of egg strings at the rear.

References

External links

Fishbase.org entry for ''Merlangius merlangus''

{{Taxonbar, from=Q273083 Gadidae Commercial fish Fish described in 1758 Fish of the Black Sea Fish of Europe Fish of the Mediterranean Sea Fish of the North Sea Taxa named by François Alexandre Pierre de Garsault Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus