European hake
Merluccius merluccius
— Where the name comes from
Merluccius comes from the medieval Latin maris lucius, “pike of the sea”, for its resemblance to the freshwater predator: from it come the French merlu, the Spanish merluza and the Italian merluzzo, which in Italy names a different fish. The Italian nasello is a diminutive of naso, the nose, for the pointed snout.
— Facts
- Group
- Fish · Actinopterygii · Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Cods
- Habitat
- Muddy and sandy bottoms between 70 and 400 metres
- Range
- The eastern Atlantic from Norway to Mauritania, and the Mediterranean
- Size
- 30–60 cm, up to 140 cm; 0.5–5 kg
- Diet
- Small pelagic fish, squid, crustaceans
- Lifespan
- 20 years
— Characteristics
- 01
At night it rises off the bottom to hunt in open water.
- 02
The inside of its mouth is black and its teeth are fine and sharp.
- 03
The young live in shoals, the adults disperse into deep water.
— What sets it apart
It is the most heavily fished species in the Mediterranean and also one of the most overexploited: for years European scientific reports estimated that the hake taken were up to ten times what the stock could bear, and that over ninety per cent were caught before spawning even once. It is the most cited case of a fishery eating its own future, and the measures taken from 2020 onwards — fewer days at sea and seasonal closures — were built almost entirely around this species.
