【Reading】ほっけ

【English Name】Atka Mackerel

This fish, belonging to the subfamily Pleurogramminae of the family Hexagrammidae, has cold-water zones as its main habitat, and adults grow to about 60 cm in length. In the seas around Japan it is widely distributed from the waters north of Ibaraki Prefecture and the Tsushima Strait to the Sea of Okhotsk and the coast of southern Sakhalin, and in the waters from off the Tohoku region around Hokkaido the existence of four stocks has been reported by researchers.

It is a member of the shusse-uo (fish that change their name as they grow), with the name changing in the order aobokke → rosokubokke → mabokke → nebokke. While it has five lateral lines on its body surface, its structure of having no swim bladder has almost no parallel among other fish species and is one of its prominent morphological features.

Because its flesh loses freshness at a very fast pace, it was formerly common for it to be distributed as a split-and-dried processed product (hiraki-boshi). In the postwar phase when herring fishing rapidly declined in Hokkaido, it achieved nationwide expansion of demand by filling that gap. In the 1980s the annual catch reached a level exceeding 300,000 tons, but due to the cumulative effects of recent water-temperature change and fishing pressure, statistics for 2013 show a sharp decline to the 53,000-ton level.

Because parasites such as Anisakis and Pseudoterranova may be present, raw consumption is almost never done. However, sashimi-grade fillets that have undergone freezing treatment at −20°C or below are distributed in some places, and there are also restaurants that use these as a sushi ingredient. Its richly fatty white flesh holds a deep umami within a light, clean mouthfeel.