Blue Ling

Lower jaw longer than upper; barbel shorter than eye. Second dorsal fin with 69 to 83 rays; anal fin with 70 to 81 rays; pelvic fin reaching beyond end of pectoral fin. Colour: dorsally grey to brown, shading to white ventrally. Posterior region of vertical fins dark with pale margins.

Southwestern Barents Sea, sometimes north to Spitsbergen, west to Greenland and Newfoundland; southern coast of Iceland, around the British Isles and south to Morocco and into the Mediterranean.

Reaches 155 cm total length.

Bottom-dwellingat depths from 150 to 1000, mostly from 350 to 500 m,on muddy bottoms. The males reach first maturity at 9 years (75 cm), and the females at 11 years (88 cm). Spawns from April to May at 500 to 1 000 m depth from W. Scotland to Norway and from the Faeroes to S. Iceland; and from the end of winter to early spring at 500-600 m depth in the Mediterranean. Females grow faster than males:at 3 years, 40cm; then 5-6 cm every year. Seventeen-year-old males reach 115 cm and 20 year-old females, 155 cm. Feeds on crustaceans and fish (flatfishes, gobies, rocklings).

Commercially fished with bottom trawls and longlines, especially in the north-eastern Atlantic. The catch reported for 1987 in the FAO Yearbook of Fishery Statistics totalled 27 365 metric tons, all from the northeastern Atlantic (France: ca. 13300 t, Faeroe Islands: 7000 t, Norway: ca. 4490 t, and others). Also taken in industrial and artisanal fisheries in the Mediterranean. Marketed frozen and as fresh fillets (Mediterranean), but, also reduced to fish meal.