Burbot facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Burbot |
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The burbot (Lota lota) is a very special fish. It is the only type of fish from the cod family that lives only in freshwater. People also call it the freshwater cod, freshwater ling, or eelpout. This fish is closely related to ocean fish like the common ling. Burbots love cold places and can even live under ice for part of the year. They need very cold water to have their babies.
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What's in a Name?
The name "burbot" comes from the Latin word barba. This word means "beard." It refers to the single whisker, called a barbel, that hangs from its chin. The scientific name, Lota lota, comes from an old French word for a fish, "lotte."
Appearance and Features
Imagine a mix between a catfish and an eel, and you'll get the burbot! It has a long, snake-like body. You can easily spot it by the single whisker under its chin. Its body is long and a bit flat on the sides. The head is flat, and it has a tube-like nose.
The burbot has a wide mouth with many small teeth. It has two soft dorsal fins on its back. The first one is short, and the second is much longer. Its anal fin on the belly is also long. The tail fin is rounded. Its pectoral fins are shaped like fans, and its pelvic fins are narrow. These small fins mean it doesn't swim very fast or against strong currents. This fish prefers to live on the bottom of lakes and rivers.
Where Burbots Live
Burbots live all around the northern parts of the world, above 40°N latitude. You can find them from France across Europe and Asia, all the way to the Bering Strait. In North America, they live from Alaska to New Brunswick on the Atlantic Coast.
They are most common in the cold streams and lakes of North America and Europe. They are quite common in Lake Erie and other Great Lakes. Scientists are studying if there might be different types of burbots because of how widely they are spread out.
Burbots in the United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, the burbot might have disappeared. The last one recorded was caught in 1969. It was found in the Old West River in Cambridgeshire. People are hoping to bring this fish back to British waters.
Burbot Life and Habitat
Where Burbots Call Home
Burbots live in large, cold rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. They mostly like freshwater. However, they can also live in slightly salty water, called brackish water, when they lay eggs. In summer, they stay in the colder, deeper parts of the water. In Lake Superior, some burbots live more than 300 meters (984 feet) deep!
Since they are bottom-dwelling fish, they can live on many types of lake or river bottoms. This includes mud, sand, rocks, and gravel. Adult burbots dig long burrows in the bottom. They use these burrows for shelter during the day. Burbots are active hunters around dawn and dusk. In winter, they move closer to shore to lay their eggs. They prefer sandy or gravelly areas for this.
Burbot Life Cycle and Reproduction
Burbots are ready to have babies when they are about four to seven years old. They usually lay their eggs between December and March. This often happens under the ice in very cold water, between 1 and 4°C (34 and 39°F). The spawning season is short, lasting only two to three weeks. Burbots lay eggs multiple times during this period, but not every year.
They don't build nests. Instead, many male burbots gather around one or two females. They form a "spawning ball" and release eggs and sperm into the water at the same time. The eggs then float around before settling into cracks in the lakebed.
A female burbot can lay a huge number of eggs, from 63,000 to over 3 million! How fast burbots grow and how long they live depends on the water temperature. Larger, older fish lay more eggs. The eggs are tiny, about 1 mm (0.04 inches) wide. They hatch in 30 to 128 days, depending on the temperature.
When burbot babies hatch, they are very small and float in the open water. They cannot live in water warmer than about 12°C (54°F). Young burbots are active at night. During the day, they hide under rocks. They grow quickly in their first year, reaching about 11 to 12 cm (4 to 5 inches) long. By their second year, they grow another 10 cm (4 inches).
Burbots move from floating in the water to living on the bottom when they become adults, around five years old. Adult burbots are usually about 40 cm (16 inches) long. The biggest ones can be between 30 and 120 cm (12 to 47 inches) long. They can weigh from 1 kg (2.2 lbs) to 12 kg (26 lbs).
What Burbots Eat and Who Eats Them
When burbot larvae are about a month old, they start eating tiny creatures. Very young burbots eat small copepods and cladocerans. As they grow, they eat zooplankton and amphipods.
Adult burbots are mostly carnivores that eat other fish. They hunt lamprey, whitefish, grayling, young northern pike, suckers, stickleback, trout, and perch. Sometimes, they also eat insects and other small creatures. They have even been known to eat frogs, snakes, and birds! Because they eat so many different things, they are often easy to catch with fishing lures.
Burbots themselves can be eaten by bigger fish. These include northern pike, muskellunge, and some types of lamprey.
Burbot and People
Commercial Use
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A book from 1590 in England said that burbots were so common they were used to feed hogs.
Burbot meat is good to eat. In Finland, the fish's eggs (roe) and liver are considered special foods. When cooked, burbot meat tastes a lot like American lobster. This is why it's sometimes called "poor man's lobster."
In the 1920s, a man named Theodore Rowell and his father, a fisherman, used burbots to feed their blue foxes. They noticed the foxes' fur became much better. They found out that burbot liver has a lot of vitamins A and D. In fact, it has more of these vitamins than cod-liver oil! The liver also makes up about 10% of the fish's total body weight. This discovery led to the creation of a company that made vitamin products.
Fishing for Burbot
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The biggest burbot ever caught was in Canada in 2010. It weighed over 25 pounds (11 kg)!
Burbots are strong predators. They sometimes attack other fish almost their own size. Because of this, they can be a problem in places where they are not native. For example, in Utah's Green River, biologists are worried. They fear burbots could eat too many eggs of other sport fish, like sockeye salmon. To help, Utah has a rule: if you catch a burbot, you cannot release it back into the water.
There's even an annual festival in Minnesota called the International Eelpout Festival. People gather to fish for burbots in the winter.
Protecting Burbots
It's hard to study burbot populations because they live in deep water and lay eggs under ice. Even though burbots are found in many places, some populations are shrinking or have disappeared. Since burbots are not a popular fish for commercial fishing, many areas don't have plans to manage them.
Pollution and changes to their habitat, like building dams on rivers, are big reasons why river burbot numbers are going down. For burbots in lakes, pollution and harmful invasive species are the main problems. Because they are not a high-priority fish for fishing, managing their populations is often overlooked.
- Froese, Rainer, and Daniel Pauly, eds. (2006). "Lota lota" in FishBase. April 2006 version.
See also
In Spanish: Lota lota para niños
