Difference between revisions of "Anchovy" - New World Encyclopedia

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[[Moroocco]] now leads the world in canned anchovies. The anchovy industry along the coast of [[Cantabria]] now dwarfs the traditional [[Catalonia|Catalan]] salters, though the industry was only initiated in Cantabria by Sicilian salters in the mid [[19th century]].
 
[[Moroocco]] now leads the world in canned anchovies. The anchovy industry along the coast of [[Cantabria]] now dwarfs the traditional [[Catalonia|Catalan]] salters, though the industry was only initiated in Cantabria by Sicilian salters in the mid [[19th century]].
  
Hamsiya makes considerable part of fishing and fish processing industries, either canned or frozen. In Bulgaria it is traditionally fried and served in cheap fast-food restaurants along the shore, typically with beer. Since 1990s the dominant position of fried hamsiya is reduced but it is still quite popular.
+
Hamsiya, a local name for Anchovy from the Black Sea makes considerable part of fishing and fish processing industries, either canned or frozen. In Bulgaria it is traditionally fried and served in cheap fast-food restaurants along the shore, typically with beer. Since 1990s the dominant position of fried hamsiya is reduced but it is still quite popular.
  
 
Anchovies preserved by gutting and [[salting (food)|salting]] in brine, matured, then packed in oil, are an important food fish, both popular and infamous for their strong flavor. In [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] times, they were the base for the fermented fish sauce called ''[[garum]]'' that was a staple of cuisine and an item of long-distance commerce produced in industrial quantities.  
 
Anchovies preserved by gutting and [[salting (food)|salting]] in brine, matured, then packed in oil, are an important food fish, both popular and infamous for their strong flavor. In [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] times, they were the base for the fermented fish sauce called ''[[garum]]'' that was a staple of cuisine and an item of long-distance commerce produced in industrial quantities.  

Revision as of 23:00, 29 March 2007

Anchovies
Anchovy closeup.jpg
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Clupeiformes
Family: Engraulidae
Genera

Amazonsprattus
Anchoa
Anchovia
Anchiovella
Cetengraulis
Coilia
Encrasicholina
Engraulis
Jurengraulis
Lycengraulis
Lycothrissa
Papuengraulis
Pterengraulis
Setipinna
Stolephorus
Thryssa

The anchovies are a family (Engraulidae) of small but common schooling saltwater plankton-feeding fish. They are found in scattered areas throughout the world's oceans, but are concentrated in temperate waters, and are rare or absent in very cold or very warm seas.

Distribution and Habitat

Anchovies live in a wide range of temperatures and salinity. Large schools can be found in shallow, brackish areas with muddy bottoms, as in estuaries and bays. Most of the more than 100 species live in shallow tropical or warm temperate seas, where they often enter brackish water around river mouths. A few tropical anchovies inhabit freshwater. (BRITT)

  • Engraulis encrasicolus-European Anchovy-Found mainly in the Mediterrean and the Black Sea.
  • Engraulis Mystcetus-Pacific Anchovy-Found in central pacific, as far north as Los Angeles; the southern coast of Baja California and south to Panama, Columbia, Ecuador and Peru.
  • Engraulis Ringens-Peruvian Anchovy-Found along the entire coast of Peru.
  • Engraulis Anchoita-Argentine Anchovy-Found the western South Atlantic as far north as Rio De Janero.
  • Engraulis Capensis-South African Anchovy-off the coasts of southern Africa from Angola and Namibia to Cape Town, South Africa and the Western Indian ocean.
  • Engraulis Japonicus-Japaneese Anchovy-Found along the west northern and central Pacific (sothern Skhalin, Sea of Japan and Pacific coasts of Japan) and south to Taiwan, the Phillippine and Indonisia.
  • Engrauslis Mordax-California Anchovy-Found off the coast of California and north to Washington State. (FAOFISH)

Biology

Anchovies at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The anchovy is a small green fish with blue reflections due to a silver longitudinal stripe that runs from the base of the caudal fin. It is a maximum nine inches in length. Its body shape is variable with more slender fish in northern populations. The snout is blunt with small, sharp teeth in both jaws. The mouth is larger than those of herrings and silversides, two fish which they closely resemble. The fish resembles a sprat in having a forked tail and a single dorsal fin, but the body is round and slender. Its main food sources are plankton and fish larvae.

Anchovys in the Food Chain

The anchovy is a good food source for almost every predatory fish in its environment, including the California halibut, rock fish, yellowtail, sharks, chinook, and coho salmon. It is also extremely important to marine mammals and birds; for example, California brown pelicans and elegant terns, whose breeding success is strongly connected to anchovy abundance. If the anchovy population drops, the population of the predatory species are also expected to decline.

Fishing

Overfishing of anchovies has been a problem. Since the 1980s, large mechanized anchovy fishing vessels have caught the fish in fine-mesh dragnets. Since 1987, the overall world catch has dropped over 60%. In 1971, 13,059,900 tons of Peruvian Anchovies were harvested, in 1996, just 8,723,265 tons.

World-wide statistics from 1996 are shown below.

  • Engraulis encrasicolus-European Anchovy-527,486 metric tons.
  • Engraulis Mystcetus-Pacific Anchovy-70,358 metric tons. Panama-27,356 tons and Equador-27,221 tons.
  • Engraulis Ringens-Peruvian Anchovy-8,723,265 metric tons. Peru-6,740,225 and Chile-1,983,040 tons.
  • Engraulis Anchoita-Argentine Anchovy-18,912 metric tons. Argentina-9,832 tons and Uruguay-3,193 tons.
  • Engraulis Capensis-South African Anchovy-41,792 metric tons.
  • Engraulis Japonicus-Japaneese Anchovy-527,485 metric tons.
  • Engrauslis Mordax-California Anchovy-11,137 metric tons.(FAOFISH)

Anchovys in the Human Food Chain

Moroocco now leads the world in canned anchovies. The anchovy industry along the coast of Cantabria now dwarfs the traditional Catalan salters, though the industry was only initiated in Cantabria by Sicilian salters in the mid 19th century.

Hamsiya, a local name for Anchovy from the Black Sea makes considerable part of fishing and fish processing industries, either canned or frozen. In Bulgaria it is traditionally fried and served in cheap fast-food restaurants along the shore, typically with beer. Since 1990s the dominant position of fried hamsiya is reduced but it is still quite popular.

Anchovies preserved by gutting and salting in brine, matured, then packed in oil, are an important food fish, both popular and infamous for their strong flavor. In Roman times, they were the base for the fermented fish sauce called garum that was a staple of cuisine and an item of long-distance commerce produced in industrial quantities.

Today they are a key ingredient in Caesar salad and Spaghetti alla Puttanesca, and are often used as a pizza topping. Because of the strong flavor they are also an ingredient in several sauces, including Worcestershire sauce and many fish sauces, and in some versions of Café de Paris butter. They are most commonly marketed in small tins, either as "flat" fillets, or as "rolled anchovies" where each fillet is rolled around a caper. While both are quite salty, the flat fillets tend to be more so. They are also marketed in jars and tubes as a paste, mostly for use in making sauces, such as anchovy essence. Fishermen also use anchovies as bait for larger fish such as tuna and sea bass.

The strong taste that people associate with anchovies is due to the curing process. Fresh anchovies, known in Italy as alici, have a much softer and gentler flavor. In English-speaking countries, alici are sometimes called "white anchovies", and are often served in a weak vinegar marinade.

This particular preservation method is associated with the coastal town of Coullouire in south east France. The white fillets (a little like marinated herrings) are sold in heavy salt, or the more popular garlic or tomato oil and vinegar marinade packs.

Setipinna taty or ikan bilis is the anchovy commonly used in South-East Asian cooking to make fish stock or sambals. Anchovy is also used to produce budu, by fermentation process.

Anchovies can concentrate domoic acid which may cause amnesic shellfish poisoning.

Mirgation-Breeding

Most of the species of Anchovs breed throughout their area and are subject to the prevailing currents in their habitat. There are several examples of Anchovys mirgating and breeding in specific areas as other species of fish do.

Zuider Zee and English Channel

Formerly they were caught in large numbers off the coast of the Netherlands in summer when they entered the Wadden Sea and Zuider Zee. After the closing of the Zuider Zee they were still found in the Wadden Sea until the 1960s. They were also caught in the estuary of the Scheldt. There is reason to believe that the anchovies found at the western end of the English Channel in November and December are those which annually migrated from the Zuider Zee and Scheldt in autumn, returning thither in the following spring; they were assumed to form an isolated stock, for none come up from the south in summer to occupy the English Channel, though the species is resident on the coast of Portugal.

The explanation appears to be that the shallow and landlocked waters of the Zuider Zee, as well as the sea on the Dutch coast, become raised to a higher temperature in summer than any part of the sea about the British coasts, and that therefore anchovies were able to spawn and maintain their numbers in these waters. Their reproduction and development were first described by a Dutch naturalist from observations made on the shores of the Zuider Zee. Spawning takes place in June and July, and the eggs, like those of the majority of marine fishes, are buoyant and transparent, but they are peculiar in having an elongated, sausage-like shape, instead of being globular. They resemble those of the sprat and pilchard in having a segmented yolk and there is no oil globule.

The larva hatch two or three days after the fertilization of the egg, and are minute and transparent. In August young specimens 1½ to 3½ in (40 to 90 mm) in length have been taken in the Zuider Zee, and these must derived from the spawning of the previous summer. There is no evidence to decide the question whether all the young anchovies as well as the adults leave the Zuider Zee in autumn, but, considering the winter temperature there, it is probable that they do. The eggs have also been obtained from the Bay of Naples, and near Marseilles, also off the coast of Holland, and once at least off the coast of Lancashire.

The occurrence of anchovies in the English Channel has been carefully studied at the laboratory of the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth. They were most abundant in 1889 and 1890. In the former year considerable numbers were taken off Dover in drift nets of small mesh used for the capture of sprats. In the following December large numbers were taken together with sprats at Torquay. In November 1890 a thousand of the fish were obtained in two days from the pilchard boats fishing near Plymouth; these were caught near the Eddystone.

Black and Azov seas

In areas around Black sea the European ahnchovy is called hamsi in Turkish, хамсия (hamsiya) in Bulgarian, and хамса (hamsa) in Russian. Black sea adult anchovy can reach length of around 12-15 cm. In the summer hamsiya migrates north in the shallow coast waters, while in the winter it moves to the depth. During migration the fish moves in huge swarms, where gulls and dolphins are actively chasing it. A variety of hamsa is feeding and breeding during the summer in the Azov sea, and moves to Black sea for the winter passing the Strait of Kerch.

As Biomarker in Ocean Ecology

Anchovys main food source is plankyton and larvae from other fish. The health of its population is a key indicator or biomarker of the overall ecology in a given portion of the oceans.

Also, as it is sensitive to water temperature and cannot flourish in colder waters, the health and overall population of the Anchovy is being watched by scieintists to study other species. Scientists have postulated that as warm water fish predators such a Pacfic mackarel are swept northward by the El Nino currents, young salmon (off the coast of Oregon and Washington) are increasingly the prey species as the abundance of northern anchovy and other aternative prey declines (due to the colder waters being swept northward). (NOAA)

"In the Pacific Ocean, air and ocean temperatures, atmospheric carbon dioxide, landings of anchovies and sardines, and the productivity of coastal and open ocean ecosystems have varied over periods of about 50 years. In the mid-1970s, the pacific changed from a cool "anchovy regime" to a warm "sardine regime". A shift back to an anchovy regime occurred in the middle to late 1990s. these large-scale, naturally occurring variations must be taken into account when considering human-induced climate change and the management of ocean living resources." (UN)

“For it is a universal law that the sea and its use is common to all . . . For every one admits that if a great many persons hunt on the land or fish in a river, the forest is easily exhausted of wild animals and the river of fish, but such a contingency is impossible in the case of the sea."

Hugo Grotius,Mare Liberum, 1609

"People have been catching fish from the sea for millennia, and until fairly recently everyone assumed that the dish supply was almost in-exaustable. This view may have been reasonable in the time of Hugo Grotius, when primitive fishing methods made it impossible, for example, for humans to exploit more than a small fraction of the huge stocks of herring and cod that inhabit the shallow seas adjacent to the European coastline."

"The ”fishery” is the term used to describe the industry that revolves around catching, processing, and selling fish. Although catch fluctuates from year to year, in general terms the Peruvian anchovy fishery has been a leading fishery in the world since 1960, at least in terms of fish caught. But even this seemingly endless resource is declining."

"Because of the technical advances, we just now have to take special care to manage fisheries in a sustainable way and in particular to ensure that the stocks are not over fished to the point where little or nothing is left for future generations to exploit."(PERU)

Spain beaching incident

On September 29th, 2006, it was reported in the Associated Press that millions of anchovies, constituting a weight of over three tons, had beached themselves in northern Spain, near Colunga, Asturias. Tests on the dead fish did not detect any toxic chemical that could have caused the beaching, and the current working theory is that the school beached itself trying to escape from "hungry dolphins or tuna." If the beached specimens had grown to maturity, it would have been more than "100 tons of potential breeders."

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

  • Encyclopedia Brittanica 2007. Anchovy. [1] (BRITT)
  • Chavez, F.P., Ryan, J., Lluch-Losta, S.E., Miguel-Niquen, C. From Anchovys to Sardenes and Back: Multi Decadel Cahng in the Pacific Ocean. UN Atlas of the Ocean [2](UN)
  • Laws, Edward A. Uninversity Science Books. El Nino and the Peruvian Anchovy. [3] (PERU)
  • FAO.FAOSTAT. Aquatic Species Fact Sheets [4] (FAOFISH)

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