Fish is a saika, an inhabitant of the northern seas

Despite its seeming lifelessness, coldness and severity, the seas of the Arctic Ocean, like the Arctic Ocean itself, are home to a multitude of living organisms. Starting from unicellular and plankton and ending with large mammals.

Polar cod

Not the last place in this cold edge is taken by the fish of the saika (Latin Boreogadus saida), a small pelagic fish of the cod family, which is also called the polar cod. This peculiar fish does not like warm waters and prefers rather low temperatures: minus or close to 0 degrees Celsius.

When the temperature of the ocean and sea waters rises to +5, the saika usually does not occur. In the summer, this cold-hearted fish prefers to stay near the ice edge, most of it in the Kara or Barents Sea.

I wonder where the fish dwells. It swims north of any other species of fish at 85 degrees north latitude. Such low temperatures easily tolerate, due to the presence in the body, namely in the circulatory system, of the glycoprotein AFGP, which prevents the fish from freezing.

Its effect is that it literally envelops the ice crystals, prevents them from expanding, due to which the fish does not freeze and turns into ice. He likes to sail not only in the coastal waters, but also in the open sea, mainly under ice and icebergs.

It prefers the upper layers of water, slightly desalinated from melted ice. Saika is not a deep-sea fish and below 500-900 meters from the sea surface does not descend. It keeps flocks and migrates, like most schooling fishes, vertically: in the morning and in the evening it lies to the bottom, and swims throughout the water column day and night.

Appearance

Looks fish saika completely unremarkable, elongated delicate body, brownish-gray top and silvery bottom, with a yellowish (sometimes purple) tide. A large head and large, bulging eyes, the lower jaw is pushed forward, which gives it a comical appearance. She swims swiftly thanks to the structure of the body, which serves her as a help in salvation from lovers she regrets.

Saika, long-living fish. Her life expectancy is 6-7 years. For the northern latitudes this is quite a lot. In length (it is the smallest of the cod family), adult individuals reach 27-30 cm, some individuals can reach 40 cm, and the weight does not exceed 250 grams.

Food for northern inhabitants

What does the saika eat? Fish prefers phytoplankton, zooplankton, small crustaceans, fry of other fish. Saika is an important link in the food chain of the Arctic Ocean. Being the main consumer of oceanic plankton, it serves as the main food for water birds, seals, narwhals, beluga, polar bears and foxes, arctic foxes, other carnivorous fish.

Fish cay, thrown ashore during storms, serves as food for land animals. Its meat is dietary, of high nutritional value, but due to its low taste qualities (hard and watery), the saika has not become a popular commercial fish. But it is excellent for processing and manufacturing fishmeal, canned in oil and tomato sauce, drying and smoking, for making animal feed.

With the onset of autumn, the saika is knocked down into large schools and, moving west and south, swims to the shores, which makes it possible to observe the accumulation of this fish in the coastal zone and in the mouths of rivers. This period, from October to March, the period of spawning in the saika.

In the same period, she starts the zhor, as the fishermen say, and her fishing is going on, although the fish itself is not distinguished by its exquisite taste. The main catch is in the Barents and the White Seas.

Spawning

Spawning occurs at temperatures below zero Celsius, but this is not critical, as the caviar is cold and floating. The mosque is from 7,000 to 60,000 eggs, one saika. Fish spawned, swims back into the sea, sometimes swimming in the mouth and lower reaches of rivers.

Her caviar drifts 3-4 months and is carried by the flow quite far from the place of spawning. Fry appears only in April, May, but the saika grows quickly, and already at the age of three it reaches an average of 17 centimeters in length. Adding in the future every year for 2-3 centimeters, it reaches its maximum to 6-7 years.

Sexual maturity fish saika reaches an average of four years, and spawns mostly once in a lifetime. Fry eat small oceanic and marine plankton. With growth, young growth begins to hunt for fry of other fish and tiny fishes.