In wild boar fish, the body is strongly compressed from the sides and covered with small hard scales. Their distinctive feature is a large "armored" head with an elongated snout, reminiscent of a pig's patch. The head is covered with strong bones and is, as it were, lined with deep grooves.
Boar fish family
The family of wild boar fish, or otherwise boar or pentacer fish, has 8 genera and 14 species. Boar fish live in the waters of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They live at a depth of 50 to 800 meters and most often stay in the range from 400 to 600 meters.
Boar are medium-sized fish. Depending on the species, they grow from 25 to 100 centimeters. They grow rather slowly and reach sexual maturity at the age of 6-7 years. They usually spawn in December-March. During spawning, females spawn 80-150 thousand eggs.
Their caviar is pelagic, that is, floating freely in the sea. The development of juveniles occurs in the water column, then gradually the fish move to the bottom mode of life. Wild boar fish feed mainly on crustaceans and arthropods.
Boar fish meat has good taste. In the late sixties and the first half of the seventies, Soviet and Japanese trawlers fished them intensively on the Northwest and Hawaiian Ridges. In 1973, 170 thousand tons of these fish were caught, which became a record figure for all time. Due to overfishing, by the end of the seventies, fish stocks were greatly reduced, and the fishery practically ceased.
Some members of the family
The object of fishing for Soviet and Japanese fish was a representative of the wild boar family - Pentaceros richardsoni, named after naturalist and explorer John Richardson. These fish, reaching a length of 56 centimeters, live in the southeastern Atlantic Ocean, the western Indian and the South Pacific. However, their spawning grounds are limited to only a few underwater ridges in the Pacific Ocean. In total, from 1969 to 1984, about 900 thousand tons of this fish were caught.
A close relative of the Richardson pentacer, the Japanese pentaceros (Pentaceros japonicus) is found at depths of 100 to 600 meters in the western Pacific Ocean from Japan to Australia and New Zealand. The Japanese pentazer, which grows up to 25 centimeters in length, is also considered a commercial fish.
The largest representative of the boar family, the giant boarfish (Paristiopterus labiosus), lives on the continental shelf of Australia and New Zealand. This representative of the boar fish family can reach 100 centimeters in length.
Approximately in the same region, off the southern coast of Australia, trawl catches often come across three-striped wild boar fish (Pentaceropsis recurvirostris) up to 70 centimeters long. This fish has a large spiny dorsal fin with 10-11 spines and a forked tail.
