''Genypterus capensis'', commonly known as kingklip, is a species of

cusk eel The cusk-eel family, Ophidiidae, is a group of marine bony fishes in the Ophidiiformes order. The scientific name is from the Greek ''ophis'' meaning "snake", and refers to their eel-like appearance. True eels diverged from other ray-finned fish ...

occurring along the

Southern African Southern Africa is the southernmost region of Africa. No definition is agreed upon, but some groupings include the United Nations geoscheme, the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community, and the physical geography definition b ...

coast from

Walvis Bay Walvis Bay (; ; ) is a city in Namibia and the name of the bay on which it lies. It is the List of cities in Namibia, second largest city in Namibia and the largest coastal city in the country. The city covers an area of of land. The bay is a ...

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

Algoa Bay Algoa Bay is a maritime bay in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It is located on the east coast, east of the Cape of Good Hope. Algoa Bay is bounded in the west by Cape Recife and in the east by Cape Padrone. The bay is up to deep. The harbour ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. It is closely related to '' Genypterus blacodes'' from

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. The species grows to a maximum length of 180 cm and a weight of 15.0 kg. It is one of the most popular fish items on South African menus. Despite appearances, it is not closely related to the eels of the order

Anguilliformes Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order (biology), order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 20 Family (biology), families, 164 genus, genera, and about 1000 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the earl ...

. Kingklip occur at depths of 50–500 m, but usually in the range of 250–350 m. They are bottom-dwelling and inhabit rocky localities on the shelf and upper

continental slope A continental margin is the outer edge of continental crust abutting oceanic crust under coastal waters. It is one of the three major zones of the ocean floor, the other two being deep-ocean basins and mid-ocean ridges. The continental margi ...

. Juveniles are more often found in shallow waters. They feed on

dragonets Dragonets are small percomorph marine fish of the diverse family Callionymidae (from the Greek ''kallis'', "beautiful" and ', "name") found mainly in the tropical waters of the western Indo-Pacific. They are benthic organisms, spending most of ...

, mantis shrimps,

hake Hake is the common name for fish in the Merlucciidae family of the northern and southern oceans and the Phycidae family of the northern oceans. Hake is a commercially important fish in the same taxonomic order, Gadiformes, as cod and haddo ...

squid A squid (: squid) is a mollusc with an elongated soft body, large eyes, eight cephalopod limb, arms, and two tentacles in the orders Myopsida, Oegopsida, and Bathyteuthida (though many other molluscs within the broader Neocoleoidea are also ...

, and various fish species. Spawning usually takes place from August to October. The species is

oviparous Oviparous animals are animals that reproduce by depositing fertilized zygotes outside the body (i.e., by laying or spawning) in metabolically independent incubation organs known as eggs, which nurture the embryo into moving offsprings kno ...

, with oval pelagic eggs floating in a gelatinous mass. Their dorsal soft rays number 150, while the anal soft rays number 110. The head and body are normally pink to orange in colour, with dark blotches dorsally. Andrew Smith, the redoubtable Scots explorer and zoologist, first described the kingklip species in 1847 from a specimen caught near the entrance to

Table Bay Table Bay (Afrikaans: ''Tafelbaai'') is a natural bay on the Atlantic Ocean overlooked by Cape Town and is at the northern end of the Cape Peninsula, which stretches south to the Cape of Good Hope. It was named because it is dominated by the fl ...

and named it ''Xiphiurus capensis'' ('xiphos'=sword, 'oura'=tail). His description was published in "Illustrations of the zoology of South Africa", an account of the natural history objects he collected during his expedition into the interior of South Africa in 1834-36. It was also described by the German naturalist

Johann Jakob Kaup Johann Jakob von Kaup (10 April 1803 – 4 July 1873) was a German naturalist. A proponent of natural philosophy, he believed in an innate mathematical order in nature and he attempted biological classifications based on the Quinarian system. Kaup ...

in 1858 and named ''Hoplophycis lalandi''. Kingklip were heavily exploited in the 1980s, and populations have not yet recovered so that some precautions are in place. Being relatively slow-growing and long-lived, stocks cannot sustain the pressure of targeted fishing, and are taken only as a bycatch species. It is one of the economically important species to South African fisheries. The related species from New Zealand, '' Genypterus blacodes'', has made its way to South African markets and is retailed as kingklip. Kingklip's lack of obvious scales has sparked lively and ongoing debate in Jewish circles as to whether it qualifies as

kosher (also or , ) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher ( in English, ), from the Ashke ...

treif (also or , ) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher ( in English, ), from the Ashken ...

. A 12-month study on larval development in the southern

Benguela Current The Benguela Current is the broad, northward flowing ocean current that forms the eastern portion of the South Atlantic Ocean gyre. The current extends from roughly Cape Point in the south, to the position of the Angola-Benguela Front in the no ...

suggested that there are different spawning strategies for the western

Agulhas Bank The Agulhas Bank (, from Portuguese for Cape Agulhas, ''Cabo das Agulhas'', "Cape of Needles") is a broad, shallow part of the southern African continental shelf which extends up to south of Cape Agulhas before falling steeply to the abyssal pla ...

and the West Coast. On the Agulhas Bank, spawning is initiated by a decrease in

sea surface temperature Sea surface temperature (or ocean surface temperature) is the ocean temperature, temperature of ocean water close to the surface. The exact meaning of ''surface'' varies in the literature and in practice. It is usually between and below the sea ...

, whereas on the West Coast, spawning only occurs when upwelling has decreased, i.e., between June and December. Females grow larger than males in both areas, but are slower growing.

References

*Nielsen, J.G., D.M. Cohen, D.F. Markle and C.R. Robins. 1999. {{Taxonbar, from=Q646058 Ophidiidae Fish of the Atlantic Ocean Fish of the Indian Ocean Marine fish of South Africa Fish described in 1847 Taxa named by Andrew Smith (zoologist)