What's in a name? by Doug Pemberton

I'm often struck by how we can be coerced into eating just about anything as long as it has a nice or exotic sounding name. For example not many people would eagerly dig into a bowl of 'slugs and fungus' but put a snail (slug) in a mushroom cap (fungus) with a bit of garlic butter, call them escargot and we'll pay through the nose for them. It seems that much of what we eat has undergone a similar form of creative marketing. Name changing is an especially common practice when it comes to selling fish.

Its name may not be exotic, but this is one classy fish The lumpfish's tough skin is protected by seven rows of hard wart-like protrusions called tubercles. Its pelvic fins are united by a circular flap of skin, forming a suction cup.

For many years fishermen caught a relatively plentiful and tasty fish called pollock but it was generally regarded as a low quality fish and therefore a hard sell. Then some marketing wiz came up with the name Boston bluefish and now we can't get enough of it. By the same token, the lowly dogfish gained new respect when renamed rock salmon. Even fish parts such as cod tongues and halibut cheeks are now considered delicacies thanks to smart marketing. And if you think it's only seafood that undergoes this descriptive metamorphosis, I have one word for you, sweetbreads!

Every New Year's Eve I celebrate another birthday and long standing tradition dictates that the morning's events start at about 9:00 a.m. with a champagne breakfast. Tables are loaded with food and at some point during the feasting and festivities, a jar of caviar usually makes the rounds. Caviar is a fancy Turkish word for "outrageously expensive fish eggs" and gives any occasion an air of wealth and opulence. Many species of fish eggs are marketed under a variety of exotic names that disguise the true product. Blades of kelp covered in a thick frosting of freshly laid herring eggs are marketed as "kazunoko" and gelatinous clumps of urchin eggs are referred to as "uni".

The caviar served at my birthday, of course, is not the real stuff (I don't know anyone who can afford $80 an ounce for fish eggs) which is gently coaxed from pampered sturgeon in eastern Europe. But rather it's the "poor man's caviar", which comes from the portly lumpfish, a common resident of Canada's Atlantic coast. The difference is hardly distinguishable to our uneducated palates.

This little clump of black, salty fish eggs on a cracker was about as close as I ever got to a lumpfish until one day, a couple of years ago when I peered under a boulder while diving off Gabarus lighthouse on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. There sat a bizarre looking fish about ten inches long, roughly spherical with a large pronounced hump on it's back. Rows of large blunt spines running the length of its body and large red eyes gave me a first impression of what you would get if you crossed a puffer fish with a cartoon rendition of a dinosaur. Its rusty reddish colour was contrasted by a yellow underside and it was perched on a little stand created by it's pelvic fins. It's always exciting when you come across something that you have never seen before but my excitement was lost on my local dive guide who shrugged off my exciting new discovery with one of those "You're not from around here are you?" looks.

Having done many more dives in the cold clear waters around Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, I'm now accustomed to these common but strange residents. The lumpfish, Cyclopterus lumpus, is the largest member of the family Liparidae, which includes the snailfishes and lumpsuckers, several species of which are spread throughout Canada's Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic waters. Lumpfish are found only in the Atlantic from Hudson Bay down to the New Jersey coast and reach an average size of 30 centimetres in length and a weight of three kilograms. However, individuals up to 60 centimetres and 10 kilograms have been reported. Being shy fish, the Atlantic lumpfish can usually be found hiding among dense growths of kelp or under pieces of wreckage, and with the number of shipwrecks in these waters there is no lack of accommodations for them.

Several members of the family of lumpsuckers are adorned with spines and the lumpfish's tough skin is protected by seven rows of hard wart-like protrusions called tubercles. Lumpfish, for most of the year, are a deep-water dweller but during the breeding season, in late spring and summer, migrate into shallower waters and can even be found in the low intertidal zone where everything that isn't nailed down is at the mercy of the ocean's movement. This isn't a problem for the lumpfish. It can attach itself securely to the bottom thanks to its modified pelvic fins which are united by a circular flap of skin, forming a suction cup.

Its basic body design implies that it is a fish with a sedentary lifestyle. It is not an active predator and in fact waddles more than it swims through the water and is rarely found far from the bottom. Their diet consists of shrimp, jellyfish and worms.

Their colour can vary from rusty brown to bluish-grey with a pale yellow underside except during the breeding season when the male is conspicuous by his red belly. After laying her eggs, the female returns to the depths and leaves the male to incubate and guard them.
The lumpfish is one of the fascinating members of the Atlantic ecosystem and I'll never be able to look at that lump of caviar quite the same way again.