Snot tongue
| Snot tongue | ||||||||||||
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Snot tongue ( Microstomus kitt ) |
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| Microstomus putty | ||||||||||||
| Walbaum , 1792 |
The red tongue or Limande ( Microstomus kitt , Syn .: Pleuronectes microcephalus ) is a right-eyed flatfish with a broad, oval body, small head and small mouth opening. The color of the very smooth skin is reddish to yellow-brown on top with brown to dark orange marbling. It is white on the blind side. The lateral line organ is almost straight, only forming a weak arch over the pectoral fin . The tongue of snot becomes 60 centimeters long and weighs up to 3 kg.
The snot tongue is widespread in the entire north-east Atlantic , it comes from the White Sea over the coast of Norway, the North Sea to the Bay of Biscay and also lives around the British Isles , near Iceland and in the Skagerrak and Kattegat .
It lives mainly on stony soils at depths of 10 to 200 meters. Their diet consists mainly of small invertebrates, mostly bristle worms .
Reproduction
The fish spawn from April to August at depths of 50 to 150 meters. The eggs are pelagic and 1 to 1.5 mm in diameter. The larvae hatch after a week and are then about 4 to 5 mm long. With a length of 1.5 to 2 centimeters, the initially pelagic larvae move on to soil life.
fishing
The snot tongue is a high-quality food fish . It is mainly caught with trawls in winter . There is a risk of confusion with the culinary dab ( Limanda limanda ), which is often also traded as Limande due to its Latin name.
In addition, the dog's tongue ( Glyptocephalus cynoglossus ) is also occasionally marketed as red tongue , without having its culinary quality.
literature
- Bent J. Muus, Jørgen G. Nielsen: The marine fish of Europe in the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Atlantic. Kosmos, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-440-07804-3 .
Web links
- Snot tongue on Fishbase.org (English)
- ↑ Gisela Reiners: Original and fake (different "snot tongues") . Welt am Sonntag , November 21, 2010, accessed June 7, 2020 .