Despite their apparent lifelessness, coldness and severity, the seas of the Arctic Ocean, like the Arctic Ocean itself, are the habitat of many living organisms. From unicellular and plankton to large mammals.
Polar cod
Not the last place in this cold region is occupied by cod fish (lat. Boreogadus saida), a small pelagic fish of the cod family, which is also called 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 oceanic and sea waters rises to +5, polar cod usually no longer occurs. In summer, this cold-loving fish prefers to stay near the edge of the ice, mostly in the Kara or Barents Sea.
I wonder where the saiga fish lives. It swims to the north of any other species of fish at 85 degrees north latitude. Such low temperatures are easily tolerated due to the presence in the body, namely in the circulatory system, of the glycoprotein AFGP, which prevents the fish from freezing.
Its action is that it literally envelops ice crystals, does not allow them to grow, so that the fish does not freeze and does not turn into ice. Likes cod swim not only in coastal waters, but also in the open sea, mainly under ice floes and icebergs.
Prefers upper layers of water, slightly desalinated from melted ice. Cayfish is not a deep-sea fish and does not fall below 500-900 meters from the sea surface. It keeps in schools and migrates, like most schooling fish, vertically: in the morning and in the evening it lies at the bottom, and day and night it floats throughout the water column.
Appearance
A saiga fish looks quite unremarkable, an elongated thin body, brown-gray on top and silver below, with a yellowish (sometimes purple) tint. The large head and large bulging eyes, the lower jaw are advanced forward, which gives it a comic look. She swims swiftly due to the structure of the body, which serves as an aid to her in saving herself from lovers of her feasts.
Sayka, a long-lived fish. Her life expectancy is 6-7 years. For the northern latitudes it is 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 weight does not exceed 250 grams.
Food for the northern inhabitants
What eats saika? Fish prefers phytoplankton, zooplankton, small crustaceans, fry of other fish. Cayfish 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, belugas, polar bears and foxes, arctic foxes, and other carnivorous fish.
Saiga fish washed ashore during storms serves as food for land animals. Its meat is dietary, of high nutritional value, but due to its low taste (hard and watery), polar cod has not become a popular commercial fish. But it is great for processing and making fishmeal, canned food in oil and tomato sauce, drying and smoking, for making animal feed.
With the onset of autumn, polar cod lumps into large flocks 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 river mouths. This period, from October to March, is the spawning period for the cod.
In the same period, she begins to eat, as the fishermen say, and her fishing is going on, although the fish itself does not differ in exquisite taste. The main catch is in the Barents and White Seas.
