''Albatrossia pectoralis'', the giant grenadier or giant rattail, is a very large

rattail Grenadiers or rattails are generally large, brown to black gadiform marine fish of the subfamily Macrourinae, the largest subfamily of the family Macrouridae. Found at great depths from the Arctic to Antarctic, members of this subfamily are amon ...

, and the only member of the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

''Albatrossia''. It is found in the north

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

from northern Japan to the

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and

Bering Sea The Bering Sea (, ; rus, Бе́рингово мо́ре, r=Béringovo móre) is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasses on Earth: Eurasia and The Amer ...

s, east to the

Gulf of Alaska The Gulf of Alaska (Tlingit: ''Yéil T'ooch’'') is an arm of the Pacific Ocean defined by the curve of the southern coast of Alaska, stretching from the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island in the west to the Alexander Archipelago in the eas ...

, and south to northern

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Mexico Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guate ...

. It is found at depths between 140 and 3,500 m. It can grow up to 2.1 m in length. The giant grenadier has the usual greatly elongated, pointed tail of the rattails.

Ecology

Giant grenadiers are

apex predator An apex predator, also known as a top predator, is a predator at the top of a food chain, without natural predators of its own. Apex predators are usually defined in terms of trophic dynamics, meaning that they occupy the highest trophic le ...

s on the upper continental slopes of the northern Pacific. Their main prey are ''

Octopoteuthis deletron ''Octopoteuthis deletron'' is a species of squid in the genus '' Octopoteuthis'' of the family Octopoteuthidae. They belong to the pelagic squids of order Oegopsida. Found at depths of in the Pacific Ocean, they have been known to grow to . '' ...

'' squid and '' Vampyroteuthis infernalis'' vampire squid.

Shape

Giant grenadier have two shapes that have been observed to date, and there is a third shape that seems to be a mixture of the two distinct shapes. They are one of the most abundant species in the northern part of Pacific Ocean. Because of their great abundance, several attempts have been made to develop a fishery for giant grenadier. However, the fish is categorized as “unpalatable” because of its soft texture, high moisture content, and low protein content.

References

External links

More info about the Giant Grenadier
(Wayback Machine archive of site) Macrouridae Fish described in 1892 Monotypic ray-finned fish genera {{Gadiformes-stub