Dissostichus

Dissostichus, the toothfish, is a genus of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Nototheniidae, the notothens or cod icefish. These fish are found in the Southern Hemisphere. Toothfish are marketed in the United States as Chilean sea bass (or Chilean seabass) or less frequently as white cod. "Chilean sea bass" is a marketing name coined in 1977 by Lee Lantz, a fish wholesaler who wanted a more attractive name for selling the Patagonian toothfish to Americans. In 1994, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted "Chilean sea bass" as an "alternative market name" for Patagonian toothfish. The toothfish was remarkably successful in the United States, Europe and Asia, and earned the nickname "white gold" within the market. Toothfish are vital to the ecological structure of Southern Ocean ecosystems. For this reason, on 4 September a national day is dedicated to the toothfish in South Georgia. Dissostichus was first described as a genus in 1898 by the Swedish zoologist Fredrik Adam Smitt, he was describing a new species from waters off Tierra del Fuego, Dissostichus eleginoides, which he placed as the only species in the new genus. Some authorities place this taxon in the subfamily Pleuragrammatinae, but the 5th edition of Fishes of the World does not include subfamilies in the Nototheniidae. The name of the genus Dissostichus is a compound of dissos which means "twofold" or "double" and stichus which means "row" or "line". an allusion to the two lateral lines of D. eleginoides. Two species in this genus are recognized: Dissostichus eleginoides Smitt, 1898 (Patagonian toothfish) Dissostichus mawsoni Norman, 1937 (Antarctic toothfish) The Patagonian toothfish is distributed circumpolarly near the Antarctic Convergence, spanning the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian sectors of the Southern Ocean, with a few populations near the Antarctic Peninsula as well as the coasts of Chile and Argentina. The Antarctic toothfish is distributed around the Antarctic continental shelf and in the Ross Sea, generally south of 60°S.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (5)

Southern Ocean

The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the world ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is regarded as the second-smallest of the five principal oceanic divisions: smaller than the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans but larger than the Arctic Ocean. Since the 1980s, the Southern Ocean has been subject to rapid climate change, which has led to changes in the marine ecosystem.

Dissostichus

Antarctic toothfish

The Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni) is a large, black or brown fish found in very cold (subzero) waters of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. It is the largest fish in the Southern Ocean, feeding on shrimp and smaller fish, and preyed on by whales, orcas, and seals. It is caught for food and marketed as Chilean sea bass together with its sister species, the more northerly Patagonian toothfish (D. eliginoides). Often mistakenly called "Antarctic cod," the Antarctic toothfish belongs to the notothen family (Nototheniidae), a group of fish species abundant near Antarctica.