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The Japanese sandfish ( Arctoscopus japonicus), also known as the sailfin sandfish , is a species of fish of the Percomorpha (perch-like) clade in the order Trachiniformes, being one of the two genera in the family Trichodontidae, the sandfishes. Known in Japan as hatahata, it is a commercially important fish especially for Akita Prefecture and Yamagata prefectures. Its habitat occurs in sandy-mud Benthic fish ranging from the Sea of Japan to the Okhotsk Sea.
As a food source, the fish has mostly been sourced locally from the coastal region of the Sea of Japan, and has been designated the official prefectural fish of Akita Prefecture. The fish, which is scaleless, may be prepared whole as braised or grilled fish, and has a mucilaginous consistency. It is also dried to make stockfish; salted, dried, and made into himono; and cured in miso as misozuke. It is the main ingredient of the fish sauce called shottsuru. The egg masses are known as burikko. In Korean language the fish is called 도루묵 dorumuk.
The fish had also been used dried or in fish meal form as fertilizer, and shipped to agricultural areas at one time, into the 20th century.
It preys and feeds on Amphipoda, , mysidacea, krill, squid, and fish. abstract
Three broad regional population groups had been postulated by Okiyama (1970) based on tagging,, cited by and later mitochondrial DNA analysis confirmed these grouping on a genetic basis.Finding in , summarized in (latter is in Japanese) The population groups are:
Catch production in the Tōhoku region (Northeastern Japan)'s Pacific coast (otherwise known as "Sanriku") is modest, and no regular spawning grounds have been confirmed. Migration routes have not been charted, but their travel range is considered extensive, since individuals from the Hokkaido and Sea of Japan population groups have been captured in the Sanriku shore.
A large mouth, oblique and turned upwards, is lined with rows of fine teeth. The gill-flap on the cheek (preopercle) each has five sharp spines. It has a first dorsal and a second dorsal fin that are separated by a gap. The are particularly large. The fish lacks an Swim bladder. It is active nocturnally, and during the day time lies buried in the mud or sand on the sea bottom, with only the mouth and eyes (and the spine) visible.
The egg mass (roe) is usually green, but may also have yellow, red, or brown coloration. Pigment components present in the eggs include bilin and such as idoxanthin, crustaxanthin, and vitamin A2 aldehyde (Dehydroretinal). The bilin and retinal produces the base green color, and the amount of relative idoxanthin content is the key determinant of the color variation. Study of its prey (such as the Amphipoda) or the fish's stomach contents reveal negligible traces of idoxanthin and crustaxanthin, which means the fish must be internally converting other carotenoid substances such as astaxanthin that are abundant in their food into idoxanthin and crustaxanthin, given that fish in general cannot build their own carotenoid wholly out of building block materials. Researchers hypothesize that the intake of astaxanthin influences the idoxanthin concentration in the body, which result in the egg color change.
An alternate Japanese name is extra2="thunder fish", which derives from their spawning (and catching) season coinciding with the months when thunderstorms become frequent.
In fact, hatahata is an old onomatopoeia representing the sound of the thunderclap, whose use is attested in the 10th century Kagerō Nikki, and which is the root of the verb hatata-ku "to thunder."In the , hatahata sounds like hadahada to non-natives, because the " ta" is locally pronounced in voiced unaspirated , so that hadahada is sometimes listed as a local name for the fish. In Akita, the fish sometimes bears the name " satake uo" after the Satake clan who were rules of the land around 1600. But the Satakes were originally rooted in Hitachi Province (present-day Ibaraki Prefecture), and legend has it that the fish followed the masters from the old country (Shokusanjin notes that the legend is given in the Akita Suginaoshi monogatari). In Tottori Prefecture the fish is called shirohata or kitaha.Called shima aji in the vicinity of Nō, Niigata, though this is misleading that term refers to the white trevally in mainstream Japan. ( 漁村と島 (2004), p.81)
In Akita Prefecture, each household used to buy them in bulk by the crates (5 or 10 crates at a time) when in season, and the surplus would be preserved as salted fish or as nukazuke to be consumed as a protein source over the winter. (Akita City's published municipal history, governmental publication)
FAO Statistics record that in 1950, the annual catch was accounted solely in Japan, by the beginning of the 1970s Korean fisheries were catching half as much or more in tonnage as the Japanese. The global peak catch occurred in 1971 with total, but by the end of the decade in 1979 there was a sharp collapse in the fish stock resulting in an annual catch of only .
In Akita Prefecture, peak catch volume reached per year, but overfishing, possibly with an interplay of water temperature "regime" shifts, led to persisting depletion of stock, so that the fishermen of Akita Prefecture, led by its self-imposed a total moratorium on the catch from 1992 to 1995The fishery closure years are graphed in fig. 4, In 1999, four participating prefectures formed a fisheries management organization to manage the fish stock, followed in 2003 by a formal Resource Recovery Plan (資源回復計画) for these prefectures. In Korea, the catch was per year in 1971, but suffered a similar decline to by 2008, and that country has also instituted conservation measures.
Tottori prefecture is another area with significant participation in catching this species. Whereas Akita targets egg-carrying adults approach the surface to spawn, Tottori fishing practices capture the deep water migrating populations by bottom trawling, so that the caught fish tends to be fattier, though they do not carry eggs. The catch season for Tottori spans from September to May.
Another preparation is the (slathered with sweet miso paste and broiled), which is eaten not only in Akita but also in the around Sakata, Yamagata.
The fish is preserved in various ways, such as nukazuke (pickled in rice bran and salt), stockfish (as dried fish), (FAQ published by Tottori Prefecture Library. Questioner sought market size of hatahata himono. No exact statistic was available, but the answerer quoted Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications's household budge survey that in 2006 the average household spent 15,835 yen, and that for fish in general, dried fish accounted for 59.3% of consumption. as , (mirin-based flavored dried fish). It is also made into a preserved narezushi; in Akita the preserving medium consists of rice and koji ( Aspergillus oryzae mold for brewing sake) but in Tottori Prefecture the hatahata narezushi is known locally as and uses okara (soy pulp).日本の食生活全集鳥取編集委員会編、『日本の食生活全集31 聞き書鳥取の食事』p24、p56、1991年、東京、社団法人農山漁村文化協会、
Fresh hatahata is suitable for or poaching or simmering in water (the dish in Yamagata is called yu-age), and eaten with soy sauce. It can be made into hatahata-jiru (miso soup), but the miso should be dissolved in the broth before the fish is plunged, otherwise the fish falls apart.
In South Korea, the fish (known there as dorumuk ()) is eaten in communities in Gangwon Province and elsewhere along the Sea of Japan. In Korea it is mainly an ingredient for jjigae hot pot dishes, but sometimes the roe-laden females are grilled and eaten.
Fresh roe that is cooked will burst and make light popping sounds when eaten, but roe from the fish preserved in salt or miso turn rubbery and hard to chew, resulting in a more blunt sound that sounds like buri buri which resulted in its name.
The Japanese folk ballad known as Akita Ondo mentions the "Oga Peninsula buriko" in the lyrics, which is a reference to the roe clusters.
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