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Fish

Pollack

Pollachius pollachius

Pollachius pollachius (Linnaeus, 1758) · Gadidae WoRMS 126440

Reference photos

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A benthopelagic hunter that hangs above kelp forests and wrecks. Look for a dark lateral line strongly arched over the pectoral fin, a projecting lower jaw and no chin barbel.

Depth

40-200 m, usually 40-100 m; juveniles inshore in the shallows

Size

Up to 130 cm total length, commonly about 75 cm

Habitat

Inshore to about 200 m over hard bottoms, around rocks, wrecks and kelp forests

Behaviour

Hangs above kelp forests and wrecks singly or in small shoals, darting up from near the bottom to take sandeels then dropping back

Diet

I eat

  • Open-water shoaling fish: sandeels, herring, sprat and capelin
  • Deep-sea prawns and shrimps; juveniles feed mainly on crustaceans among inshore rocks and weed
  • Young cuttlefish, heavily preyed on in French waters of northern Brittany

Eats me

  • Seals, which take pollack from gillnets and tangle nets; one study estimated 18% of pollack landings were depredated

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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