European Anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) - Profile

(Last Updated On: April 13, 2021)

The European anchovy scientific name Engraulis encrasicolus is a grassy fish somewhat related to herring. It is a type of anchovy; anchovies are placed in the family Engraulidae, says Wikipedia.

It is located on the coasts of Europe and Africa, including the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Azov Sea. This article will be sharing facts about European anchovy.

European anchovy Description

It can easily be identified by its deep cracked face, the angle of rape behind the eyes. The guided snout extends beyond the lower jaw. The fish is analogous to the sprite in having a prickly tail and a single dorsal fin, but the body is round and slender.

The recorded weight of a fish is 49g g maximum recorded length is 21 cm (8 inches). 13.5 cm is a more common length.

It is underbelly and has a bar of silver on the back and sides of the blue, green, or gray. A silver stripe on the side goes away with age.

Habitat and Ecology

The European anchovy is a coastal pelagic species; In summer, it usually lives in water less than 50 meters deep (though in the Mediterranean it goes 200 meters deep in winter) and can go as deep as 400 meters.

As it is urihline, it can live in water with a salinity of 5-41 PSU (seawater salinity is usually 35 PSU). So it can live in lagoons, alligators, and saltwater in lakes.

European anchovies eat plankton, mostly copepods, and egg yolks, and larvae eat fish, mollusks, and syrups. They mature, often traveling north in the summer and south in the winter in the south. They make up big schools and can create top balls if threatened.

European anchovies are eaten by many species of fish, birds, and marine mammals.

Life cycle

Depending on the temperature when the temperature is sufficiently hot, the species will multiply during the warm period from approximately April to November.

At least some of the local subspecies have separate spawning grounds and are genetically distinct, although the spawning grounds are migratory.

Some freshwater boils. Ovarian to ovarian. About 24-65 hours before the eggs hatch, float as plankton about 50 meters above the water column.

The burnt larvae are transparent and grow rapidly; A year later, in the event that they are likely to survive, they will be 9-10 cm long.

Women are bigger than men. When they reach a length of 12-13 cm, they span for the first time. A Southwestern Africa study found no samples older than three years old.

Distribution

European anchovies are abundant in the Mediterranean, and before that there were also black and azure seas (see below). They are regularly caught along the coast of Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Albania, Romania, Russia, Spain, Turkey, and Ukraine.

The species range extends south of Norway along the Atlantic coast of Europe. It is common in Devon and Cornwall (UK) in winter but has not yet been caught in such numbers as commercial importance.

Zuiderji and the English Channel

When they entered the Wadden Sea and Zuiderjee last summer, they were caught in large numbers off the coast of the Netherlands. They were found in the Wadden Sea until the 1960s, even after the gambling stopped.

There is reason to believe that the anchovies removed from Zuiderjee and Scheldt in the autumn on the west side of the English Channel in November and December and returned the following spring.

They were thought to be an isolated population, with no one coming to occupy the English Channel from the southern part of the summer, although the species does exist on the coast of Portugal.

Its interpretation shows that in summer, the Zuiderjee and the shallow and subterranean waters of the Dutch coast become warmer than the coastal waters of Britain so that anchovies can better maintain and maintain their numbers in Dutch waters.

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