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Fish

Atlantic cod

Gadus morhua

Gadus morhua Linnaeus, 1758 · Gadidae WoRMS 126436

Reference photos

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Heavy-bodied cod with three dorsal and two anal fins, a chin barbel, and a curved pale lateral line.

Depth

0-600 m, usually 150-200 m

Size

Up to 200 cm total length, commonly around 100 cm; mature fish are usually about 120 cm and 12 kg

Habitat

Cold temperate seas from the shoreline out over the continental shelf, commonly over sandy bottoms; adults in deeper, colder water

Behaviour

Schools by day about 30-80 m above the bottom, dispersing at night to feed; often in large, dense shoals

Diet

I eat

  • Fish, especially herring, capelin, sandeels and haddock, including smaller cod
  • Crabs, hermit crabs, shrimps and prawns taken off the seabed
  • Other seabed invertebrates, including bivalves, whelks, polychaete worms and brittlestars; young cod feed mainly on copepods

Eats me

  • Seals and small cetaceans, including grey seal, harbour seal and harbour porpoise
  • Larger predatory fish, including whiting, saithe, monkfish and spurdog, and bigger cod eating smaller ones
  • Seabirds, including northern gannet and northern fulmar

Where you'd find it

Found around most of Britain and Ireland, though less often in the waters west of Ireland.

ChannelCeltic SeaNorth SeaIrish SeaW of IrelandW of Scotland
Often seenNow and thenWhere PEBL filmsBased on marine survey records (OBIS). Blank seas can mean nobody has looked there, not that the animal is absent.

Sources

Open-access references behind this page. Every statement on this page was read out of one of them; anything that could not be traced to a source was taken off the page rather than left standing. Each link was checked on the date shown, and confirmed then to be about this species.

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