Japanese sandfish
The Japanese sandfish (Arctoscopus japonicus), also known as the sailfin sandfish , is a species of fish of the Percomorpha (perch-like) clade in the order Trachiniformes, being one of the two genera in the family Trichodontidae, the sandfishes. Known in Japan as hatahata (ハタハタ, 鰰, 鱩, 燭魚), it is a commercially important fish especially for Akita and Yamagata prefectures.[4] Its habitat occurs in sandy-mud bottoms ranging from the Sea of Japan to the Okhotsk Sea.[1]
As a food source, the fish has mostly been sourced locally from the coastal region of the Sea of Japan, and has been designated the official prefectural fish of Akita Prefecture.[5] The fish, which is scaleless, may be prepared whole as braised or grilled fish, and has a mucilaginous consistency.[6] It is also dried to make stockfish; salted, dried, and made into himono; and cured in miso as misozuke. It is the main ingredient of the fish sauce called shottsuru.[7] The egg masses are known as burikko.[7] In Korean the fish is called 도루묵 dorumuk.[1]
The fish had also been used dried or in fish meal form as fertilizer, and shipped to agricultural areas at one time, into the 20th century.
The Japanese sandfish has a life span of 5 years,[5] attaining a typical fork length of 20 centimetres (7.9 in).[8] It is a deep sea fish that usually inhabits sandy and muddy sea floors in waters 200 to 400 metres (660 to 1,310 ft) (550 metres (1,800 ft)[9]) deep, but migrates from November to January to spawn in shallow rocky beds of seaweed.[8] The males reach sexual maturity at 1+1⁄2 years of age and beyond, and females at the 2-year-old stage; the individuals do not die after single spawning, and have several breeding cycles during their life span.[5][10][11]
The Japanese sandfish is distributed in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, particularly the Sea of Japan to the Okhotsk Sea, Kurile Islands and Kamchatka Peninsula.[13]
Three broad regional population groups had been postulated by Okiyama (1970) based on tagging,[14] and later mitochondrial DNA analysis confirmed these grouping on a genetic basis.[15] The population groups are:[16][17]
