Fish
Burbot
Lota lota · also called eelpout, ling, lawyer, freshwater cod
The burbot looks like someone crossed an eel with a catfish and left it in the freezer. It is neither. It is a cod, the only one that lives in fresh water, and it runs its whole life on a winter timetable, feeding hardest when the lake is frozen over and spawning in the dark beneath the ice.
Overview
Lota lota is circumpolar across the cold fresh waters of the Northern Hemisphere, in deep lakes and large slow rivers. It has the cod family’s single chin barbel, long soft fins, and flaky white flesh. It is a nocturnal bottom predator that eats insect larvae when young and then mostly fish.
A cold-water life
It grows fastest in water just above freezing, is most active in winter, and goes sluggish and deep in summer. In January and February dozens of burbot gather under the ice and writhe together in a rotating ball to spawn.
Liver oil and lobster
Its oil-rich liver can be a tenth of its weight and was once rendered like cod liver oil. The firm white tail meat, poached and buttered, tastes enough like lobster to earn it the name poor man’s lobster.
Status
Least Concern and widespread across northern Eurasia and North America, but gone from the warm southern edge of its range — including Britain, where it has not been seen since the 1970s and a reintroduction is under way.
Burbot: common questions
Is a burbot the same as an eel?
No, though it is often mistaken for one because of its long body, smooth slippery skin, and the long fins running down its back and belly to the tail. The burbot is a true bony fish in the cod family, with rounded fins, a broad flattened head, and a single whisker-like barbel on the chin. A true freshwater eel has no pelvic fins at all, a much more snake-like body, and a completely different life cycle involving a migration to the ocean to spawn. The burbot lives and breeds entirely in fresh water and never goes to sea.
Why does the burbot spawn in the middle of winter?
The burbot is a cold-adapted fish that does almost everything on a winter schedule. Spawning in January and February, under the ice, means the eggs incubate through late winter and hatch in spring, so the tiny larvae appear just as the water warms and plankton blooms, giving them the maximum growing season before the next winter. Cold water also holds more oxygen and has fewer active predators. The spawning itself is unusual, because instead of pairing off, many fish gather over a gravel or sand bar and coil together into a squirming mass, broadcasting eggs and sperm into the surrounding water.
Are burbot good to eat?
Very. The flesh is firm, white, low in fat, and mildly sweet, essentially freshwater cod, and its resemblance to lobster when poached and dipped in melted butter has earned it the nickname poor man's lobster. It was historically undervalued in North America, where anglers often discarded it as a slimy nuisance, but it is prized in Scandinavia, Russia, and parts of the northern United States and Canada, and dedicated winter burbot fisheries and cook-offs have grown its reputation. The liver and the roe are also eaten.
Why is the burbot extinct in Britain?
It vanished over a few decades in the mid-twentieth century, and the causes were probably several acting together, from the drainage and canalisation of the slow fenland rivers it lived in, to pollution from agriculture and sewage, to warming water at the very southern edge of a cold-water species' range, to the loss of the seasonal floodplain habitat its young may have needed. The last confirmed British burbot was caught in the 1970s. Because the species is common elsewhere in Europe, a project is now working to breed continental burbot and reintroduce them to suitable rivers in eastern England.