NL·0461Herbarium of the Nature Library
- Name
- Gadus morhua
- Family
- Gadidae
- Native to
- North Atlantic from Cape Hatteras to Greenland and from the Bay of Biscay to the Barents Sea
- Habitat
- Continental shelf, Cold temperate seas
Atlantic cod
Gadus morhua
Also calledBacalao (Spanish, salted) · Bacalhau (Portuguese) · Torsk (Norwegian) · Skrei (Norwegian, spawning migrant) · Morue (French)
The fish that fed empires: dried and salted cod carried Viking and Basque sailors across oceans. The collapse of the Grand Banks stock in 1992 became the textbook warning of industrial overfishing.
The Atlantic cod is a fish of the family Gadidae, widely consumed by humans. It is also commercially known as cod or codling. Wikipedia
What it can do
- iA large female can release several million eggs in a season
- iiSome cold-water populations produce antifreeze glycoproteins
- iiiChin barbel and pelvic fins carry taste buds used to find buried prey
- ivMakes grunting sounds with swim-bladder muscles during spawning
In the field
Field marks
- aThree dorsal fins and two anal fins
- bSingle long barbel on the chin
- cPale, curved lateral line on mottled greenish-brown to reddish sides
- dUpper jaw overhangs the lower
- eSquare or slightly concave tail
- Not to be confused with
- Haddock has a black lateral line and a dark 'thumbprint' blotch above the pectoral; pollock (saithe) has a straight pale lateral line and protruding lower jaw.
- Where to see it
- Lofoten Islands, Norway (spawning skrei); Gulf of Maine and Newfoundland coasts; North Sea and Baltic
- When
- Resident; Lofoten spawning aggregations Feb–Apr
Life & habits
- Diet
- Crustaceans, sand eels, herring, capelin and smaller cod
- Habitat
- Cold shelf waters from the shore to about 600 m, near the bottom
- Size
- Commonly up to 1 m; historical record ~2 m and 96 kg
- Lifespan
- Up to about 25 years
Northeast Arctic 'skrei' cod migrate from the Barents Sea to spawn off the Lofoten Islands every winter.
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Native range
North Atlantic from Cape Hatteras to Greenland and from the Bay of Biscay to the Barents Sea
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the old herbals & bestiaries
Woodcuts and engravings matched from the Source Library’s scanned books by name. Plates marked “relative” show a close kin rather than this exact species. Click a plate to read the page it came from, with translation.
De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica
Willem Piso · 1658 · p.479
Books on Marine Fishes
Guillaume Rondelet · 1554 · p.297
Books on Marine Fishes
Guillaume Rondelet · 1554 · p.300
History of Animals, Book II: On Oviparous Quadrupeds
Conrad Gessner · 1586 · p.444
History of Animals, Book II: On Oviparous Quadrupeds
Conrad Gessner · 1586 · p.445
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Gadus morhua in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
Marginalia
Norse stockfish dried on Lofoten racks has been traded to Europe since the Viking Age, and Basque and other European fleets fished Newfoundland for salt cod by the 1500s; Massachusetts hangs a carved 'Sacred Cod' in its State House.
Curiosity
The IUCN global status (Vulnerable) still rests on a 1996 assessment; European cod was reassessed as Least Concern regionally, while Newfoundland's northern cod has never fully recovered.
Kinship
Photographs: iNaturalist contributors under the licences shown. Records: GBIF.org. Historical plates: Source Library (CC BY-SA 4.0; originals public domain). Summary text: Nature Library editors and Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Medicinal and edibility notes are historical and educational, not advice. iNaturalist taxon 63740.