Author: Lepechin, 1774
Boreogadus saida Lepechin, 1774
Status in World Register of Marine Species:
Accepted name: Boreogadus saida (Lepechin, 1774) (updated 2009-06-25)
Diagnosis: first dorsal finrays 11-15, second dorsal finrays 12-17, third dorsal finrays 17-23; first anal finrays 14-20, second anal finrays 1824. Vertebrae 53-58. Gillrakers 37-46. Scales small, not imbricated, also minute bony spinous plates on sides of body, head and fins. Colour: variable, back brownish, lighter with violet or yellowish shade above lateral line, silvery below. Size: to 32 cm SL, usually 12-16 cm.
Habitat: inshore but mainly offshore, at edge and under drifting ice, salt and brackish water, entering mouths of rivers. Behaviour: gregarious, in large shoals; feeding and spawning migrations. Food: calanoids, hyperiids, planktonic juvenile amphipods, euphausiids.
Reproduction: January and February, below 0° C, inshore and offshore, under or near drifting ice, near bottom.
Distribution: White and Barents Seas, off Spitzbergen, Iceland and eastern Greenland, also circumpolar throughout Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas.
Eggs, larvae and young stages. Jensen, 1904: 268, pl. XI (fig. 1a-b) I Schmidt, 1905: 24, fig. 4, pl. I (fig. 19-24) | Ehrenbaum, 1905-1909, 1909: 229, fig. 85 | Johansen, 1912: 667 | Chaldinova, 1936: 331, fig. 7-8 | Pertseva, 1936: 10, 22, fig. 9-11 | Rass, 1946: 72, fig. 1 | Kazanova, 1949: 166, fig. 6 | Ponomareva, 1949: 199, fig. 10 | Musienko, 1961: 274, fig. 2 | Kashkina, 1962: 109, fig. 8-9 | Rass, 1968: 135.
Otoliths (sagitta). Jensen, 1905a: 7, fig. 3c-d | Schmidt, 1968: 17, pl. 3 (fig. 34), pl. 16.