How to catch the creepy toothfish (26 photos)

One of the most difficult types of marine fishing is the extraction of toothfish, the “white gold of the Southern Ocean,” as this delicious fish is called for its snow-white meat with healing properties and great taste. From the last such voyage, correspondent Alexander Remeslo brought these photographs taken on board the Korean longline vessel Sunstar in the Falkland Islands and in the Ross Sea.

The harvest of Antarctic and Patagonian toothfish, large fish from the family Nototheniidae, is carried out under the strict control of the Antarctic Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

Let's find out more about this fish...

The genus of Toothfish - Dissostichus - includes two species - Antarctic toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni) and Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides). Representatives of the genus are inhabitants of the Southern Ocean; Patagonian toothfish are also found further north, in the Atlantic, to the coast of Uruguay. Antarctic toothfish are rarely found north of 60° south latitude.

The usual habitat is Antarctic and subantarctic waters. Toothfish are able to descend to depths of 2000 m (usually up to 800 m) and quickly emerge. These are predatory fish, 130–200 cm long and weighing up to 70 kg, feed on small squid, but more often fish, and are also hunted by Weddell seals and sperm whales. One of the peculiarities of toothfish is its ability to quickly float up and then dive back under water in search of prey. It is simply amazing how this fish tolerates the colossal pressure drops that occur during such movements.

Toothfish were discovered by scientists relatively recently - at the end of the 19th century during one of the southern expeditions. Both species are subject to fishing. Because of the Antarctic Treaty, Patagonian toothfish, which live further north, are more often fished for. The fat content of fish meat reaches 30% due to the constant habitation in cold water (for which toothfish received the nickname “butterfish”), it is often used for the manufacture of balyk products. Like any sea fish, toothfish contains a fairly large amount of iodine, as well as fat-soluble vitamins, so its meat is highly valued.

In this fishery, any vessel, regardless of the country’s flag, can operate only under the mandatory condition of having international scientific observers on board. For more than ten years, Russian specialists have also been playing this role, including employees of the Kaliningrad Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (AtlantNIRO).

Both species of toothfish, which only an experienced ichthyologist can distinguish, reach impressive sizes. Their weight exceeds 100 kilograms, and their length reaches two meters or more. They feed on fish, squid, octopuses, and themselves serve as food for giant Antarctic squids and sperm whales.

Well, for people, of course. The main consumers of toothfish among Asian countries are Korea and Japan, in Europe - Germany, in North America - the USA. Occasionally, toothfish are also found in our stores. But few people think about how long a journey he has made from the chilly waters of the ocean to an expensive supermarket display.

Toothfish are caught in various areas of the Southern Ocean with multi-kilometer bottom tiers at depths of up to 2000 meters and even deeper. Fish and squid are used as bait.

One of the best fishing grounds for Antarctic toothfish is the remote Ross Sea polynya that forms in the interior during the short Antarctic summer. Even at this time of year, fishing here takes place among floating moving ice and icebergs, which requires a lot of effort and professionalism from fishermen.

It often happens that longlines placed in clear water turn out to be covered with ice after a change in wind direction, and it is extremely difficult to select them. Hooks are used to lift toothfish onto the deck. And cutting toothfish by hand is not a spectacle for the faint of heart.

And the most difficult and risky thing is to overcome the so-called ice belt, which separates the Ross Sea polynya from open water. These are compact ice fields, hummocks, among which icebergs of the most bizarre shapes and colors are frozen. Wind speeds in the Ross Sea can reach hurricane force, and icing of ships is common.

Typically, small longline fishing vessels, often without even an ice class, cross the ice belt in a caravan. It happened that it took weeks to overcome this. It happened that the ships were never able to defeat him. There have been tragedies...

The longliners that break through the ice first occupy the best fishing grounds and have a greater chance of success. After choosing a quota, regardless of how much fish is in the hold, all vessels leave the area until the next fishing season.

By the way

Toothfish meat is rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids (Omega 3), vitamins B1, B2, and calcium. The cost of toothfish products can exceed $1,000 per ton; a toothfish dish in a prestigious Asian restaurant costs about $200.

Interesting Facts

- The first Europeans to see an Antarctic toothfish, which was taken from a seal on an ice floe, were members of Robert Scott's Antarctic expedition, who tried to reach the South Pole in 1910-1912.

- The first Patagonian toothfish was discovered in 1888. Americans from the research vessel Albatross off the southern coast of Chile caught an unknown one and a half meter fish, but failed to save it. The barrel in which it was stored was washed away by a storm wave. A photograph remained, from which experts later determined that it was a Patagonian toothfish.

Stones weighing up to a kilogram were often found in the stomachs of toothfish, which puzzled researchers. Indeed, why would a fish swallow stones? The simplest explanation is that toothfish swallow them accidentally along with bottom animals that they also feed on, or in agony, trying to free themselves from a swallowed fishing hook.

The unusually rich marine living resources of Antarctica have long attracted humans and have now gone through several stages of development. At first it was the whaling and hunting expansions of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries (Zenkovich, 1969; Borodin, 1996). Then, after complex Soviet fishery expeditions of the 60s of the last century, the resources of Antarctic krill, bottom shelf and mesopelagic fish were identified and intensively used (Marty, 1969; Bogdanov, Lyubimova, 1978; Shust, 1998).

Fishing in Antarctic waters began and developed mainly in the areas of the island shelves of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean sectors. These are South Georgia, South Orkney and South Shetland Islands, the islands of the Crozet and Kerguelen archipelagos. Here the resources of marbled and gray notothenia were developed on the South Georgia shelf in 1969-1971. and in the Kerguelen region in 1970-1971. However, these species could not withstand intensive fishing pressure. Their populations quickly declined to non-commercial levels and from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s the main target species in trawl fisheries in the above areas was the Gunnar icefish. However, in the mid-1980s, with the start of longline fishing for Patagonian toothfish, and then in the late 1990s for Antarctic toothfish, the results of successful bottom longline fishing began to attract more and more countries to Antarctica, even those that had not previously conducted any fishing here.

The Antarctic toothfish is the largest fish of the Nototheniidae family, living in Antarctic and temperate (notal) waters of the Southern Hemisphere. Despite the very wide circum-Antarctic distribution, its actual distribution became known only recently, and its biological features and abundance are still being studied to this day, simultaneously with the development of the fishery.

Large Antarctic toothfish were first caught in 1901 by Robert Scott's expedition, not far from the American Antarctic station McMurdo, in the Ross Sea. The fish, about 1.5 m long, was harpooned along with a Weddell seal, which managed to bite off its head, depriving researchers of the opportunity to study the unique fish in detail. Only more than sixty years later, American polar explorers, also in McMurdo Sound, managed to obtain a large Antarctic toothfish with a length of 135 cm and a weight of 27 kg. A live toothfish was taken from a Weddell seal. Observations under the ice on the Ross Sea shelf showed that in the Ross Sea there is a very high population of Antarctic toothfish and, probably, on the shelf and continental slope of other continental seas and on underwater rises there are also its accumulations and individual populations. Confirmation was received when a real longline fishery for Antarctic toothfish began in the 1990s throughout the ice-free waters of the Ross Sea, the nearby seamounts and the Balleny Islands. According to preliminary data from American experts, in the Ross Sea alone, the biomass of this toothfish was estimated at 400 thousand tons.