Arctic char
Arctic char | ||||||||||||
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Arctic char ( Salvelinus alpinus ) |
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Systematics | ||||||||||||
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Scientific name | ||||||||||||
Salvelinus alpinus | ||||||||||||
( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The arctic char , wandering char or the red trout ( Salvelinus alpinus ) belong to the genus of char ( Salvelinus ).
distribution
The Arctic char has a widespread distribution area shaped by the Ice Ages . It lives both in isolated inland lakes and in coastal marine waters in the northern Arctic Ocean .
In Europe, its distribution area extends from the oxygen-rich lakes of the Alps and Pyrenees to Finland , Sweden , Norway , Lake Ladoga and Onega and the tributaries of the White Sea , Ireland , Scotland and Iceland . He also lives in South Greenland and in North America in some lakes in Québec , Maine and New Hampshire . It is the only species of fish in Hazensee on Ellesmere Island , its northernmost distribution area. In the Alps it populates lakes up to an altitude of 2600 meters.
features
Depending on the habitat, the arctic char has a different color, but is easy to distinguish from the trout by the white front edge of the pelvic fins and anal fin as well as by the larger mouth . During the spawning season, the otherwise whitish belly and the belly-side fins of the milkers in particular turn red. The fish have very small round scales . Arctic char grow to a length of 40 to 75 centimeters. Regardless of the body size reached, the arctic char is long-lived at up to 40 years of age.
Way of life
Arctic char like to stay in deep waters. They feed on larvae and insects , mussels, and small fish such as minnows . In terms of reproductive behavior, a distinction is made between bank and ground spawners. Shore spawners spawn from September to January. Bottom spawners spawn in the summer from July to August at depths of 20 to 80 meters above the stone floor, especially at spring outlets.
The small stunted forms eat plankton . Sexually mature arctic char with a length of 16 cm and a weight of 33 g were caught in alpine lakes. Arctic char in Austrian high mountain lakes are mainly stocked at the time of Emperor Friedrich III. and Emperor Maximilian I back in the 15th century. You can find them, for example, in the Styrian Wildensee at a height of 1500 m and in the Tyrolean Seebensee at 1658 m above sea level .
The Schwarzreuter is not its own kind, as is widely assumed, but a dish prepared using a special smoking process (see below). The Alsatian char is a cross between arctic char and brook char and is used in fish farming and gastronomy .
The arctic char as an edible fish
The Schwarzreiter is a culinary specialty . These are small-stature Arctic char from the Königssee (Bavaria), which - impaled on wooden sticks and smoked over beech wood - were valued as a delicacy throughout Central Europe in the Middle Ages . In the canton of Zug (Switzerland) the arctic char is called "Zuger Rötel" and enjoys a high status as a delicacy.
The Arctic char was fish of the year 2005 and 2017 in Austria ; in Switzerland it was fish of the year 2012.
literature
- Fritz Terofal: Freshwater fish in European waters (= Steinbach's natural guide. Vol. 5). Mosaik, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-570-01274-3
- Kurt Deckert among others: fish, amphibians, reptiles (= Urania animal kingdom. Volume 6). New edition. Urania, Leipzig et al. 1991, ISBN 3-332-00491-3
Web links
- Arctic char on Fishbase.org (English)
- Salvelinus alpinus in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2008 Posted by: J. Freyhof, M. Kottelat, 2008. Accessed on December 31 of 2008.
- More information about Arctic char
Individual evidence
- ↑ Note: folding knife of the type Opinel Nº 08 (see stamping); Handle length according to the manufacturer's website
- ↑ a b Bavarian State Office for the Environment 2017, PureAlps project
- ↑ Arctic char at bmlfuw.gv.at
- ↑ Writings of the Berlin Society of Friends of Nature Research, Volume 4 at books.google.de