Details
Mallotus villosus
A small schooling fish of Arctic, North Atlantic, and North Pacific seas that surges toward coasts to spawn and feeds many predators.
Map: Ecoregions 2017 © RESOLVE (CC BY 4.0) · Natural Earth (PD)
Lives in cold ocean and coastal waters, especially subarctic parts of the Barents Sea, North Atlantic, and North Pacific.
The body is slender and silvery with a dark green back. Breeding males develop hairy-looking scale ridges along the sides.
Large schools migrate widely and gather on shallow gravel or beaches to spawn, with runs that vary strongly by year.
It eats copepods, krill, and other small plankton, carrying plankton energy to larger marine predators.
Eggs are deposited on gravel or beaches and stick to the substrate. In some areas many adults die after spawning.
Capelin is sold as food and is key prey for cod, whales, seals, and seabirds in cold northern seas.
