Milkfish

Milkfish ( Chanos chanos )

The milkfish ( Chanos chanos ) is occurring in the tropical and subtropical Indo-Pacific and eastern Pacific marine fish. It is the only living species of the recent Chanidae family. Seven extinct species in five genera are known. Milk fish, when they swim just below the water surface and projecting the dorsal fin, sometimes mistaken by tourists with sharks, which is why they are also called Touristenhai. The milkfish is an edible fish, which is also drawn in Aquaculture, especially in Southeast Asia.

Features

Milk fish are herring- like, streamlined, with a large, forked tail fin, silvery colored to milky white. They are in the wild usually one meter long. The maximum length is 1.8 meters with a maximum age of 15 years. They are toothless, feed mainly on algae and plant plankton, but also zooplankton and invertebrates, in this case mainly of jellyfish. Milkfish have a Epibranchialorgan sitting in pairs at the beginning of the long esophagus and produces mucus, may be in the sticks to the plankton, so easily swallowed.

Way of life

They live near the coast in flocks, especially older milkfish alone. Most of them are located directly below the water surface, but partly also in depths up to 30 meters. Its distribution area is a wide area along the shores of the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, often in brackish water or in estuaries (milk fish can tolerate both salt and fresh water). Milk fish spawn near the shore at the time of moon change. The ribbon-like larvae live for two to three weeks in the sea, then migrate into the mangrove zone, estuaries, and sometimes lakes. For reproduction, the milk fish swim back into the sea.

Phylogeny

Fossil Chanidae the family is through the five genera Dastilbe, Parachanos, Tharrhias, Gordichthys and Rubiesichthys occupied from the Lower Cretaceous of Brazil, Africa and Spain. The last two genera are placed in a separate subfamily, the Rubiesichthyinae, all others including the recent Chanos in the Chaninae.

Use

To use as a food fish, the larvae are caught in shallow water of rivers and estuaries, raised in heavily eutrophicated ponds with the fact proliferating algae until they are caught again usually at 15 to 20 cm in length and sold as fresh fish, smoked or frozen.

The milkfish is one of the 15 main species produced in aquaculture worldwide. In 2006, the world production of Chanos chanos was 585 375 tons, thus representing around 8 % of global aquaculture production. In particular, the rapid growth and the relative insensitivity of the milkfish is relevant here.

In the Philippines, milkfish is known as Bangus (also Bangrus in the Visayas ) one of the most eaten food fish and also also the " national fish ".

Milk fish are strong fighters as popular with anglers, but a hard man. Tomboys are usually incidental catches, as milk fish are very suspicious and do not accept the most bait - they also develop at catching extremely strong escape and jump forces.