''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 east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

, 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 sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea 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 bound ...

. 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 the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

, the

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

, Portugal, the

, the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some . In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn con ...

, the

Adriatic Sea The Adriatic Sea () is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto (where it connects to the Ionian Se ...

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 east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

. 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

pet A pet, or companion animal, is an animal kept primarily for a person's company or entertainment rather than as a working animal, livestock, or a laboratory animal. Popular pets are often considered to have attractive/ cute appearances, inte ...

s. 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'').

Parasites

Whiting and related other

Gadidae The Gadidae are a family of marine fish, included in the order Gadiformes, known as the cods, codfishes, or true cods. It contains several commercially important fishes, including the cod, haddock, whiting, and pollock. Most gadid species ar ...

species are plagued by parasites. These include the cod worm (''

Lernaeocera branchialis ''Lernaeocera branchialis'', sometimes called cod worm, is a parasite of marine fish, found mainly in the North Atlantic. It is a marine copepod which starts life as a small pelagic crustacean larva. It is among the largest of copepods, ranging ...

''), a

copepod Copepods (; meaning 'oar-feet') are a group of small crustaceans found in nearly every freshwater and saltwater habitat (ecology), habitat. Some species are planktonic (living in the water column), some are benthos, benthic (living on the sedimen ...

crustacean that clings to the

gill A gill () is a respiration organ, respiratory organ that many aquatic ecosystem, 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 r ...

s of the fish and metamorphoses into a plump,

sinusoidal A sine wave, sinusoidal wave, or sinusoid (symbol: ∿) is a periodic wave whose waveform (shape) is the trigonometric sine function. In mechanics, as a linear motion over time, this is '' simple harmonic motion''; as rotation, it correspond ...

, 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