North Pacific hake

North Pacific hake
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Order:	Gadiformes
Family:	Merlucciidae
Genus:	Merluccius
Species:	M. productus
Binomial name
Merluccius productus (Ayres, 1855)
Synonyms
Merlangus productus Ayres, 1855 Homalopomus trowbridgii Girard, 1856

The North Pacific hake, Pacific hake, Pacific whiting, or jack salmon (Merluccius productus) is a ray-finned fish in the genus Merluccius, found in the northeast Pacific Ocean from northern Vancouver Island to the northern part of the Gulf of California. It is a silver-gray fish with black speckling, growing to a length of 90 cm (3 ft). It is a migratory offshore fish and undergoes a daily vertical migration from the surface to the seabed at depths down to about 1,000 m (3,300 ft).

It is the object of an important commercial fishery off the West Coast of the United States, and annual quotas are used to prevent overfishing. Pacific Hake (whiting) contains an enzyme in its tissues which can rapidly spoil the fish in a matter of just under 12 hours, and cause the tissues of the fish to disintegrate. Fisheries that target Pacific Hake typically deliver the fish to processing plants within several hours of being caught. Processing plants add an enzyme inhibitor to raw processed fish to slow the spoilage of Pacific Hake and neutralize the specific enzyme that causes the fish to spoil quickly. Almost all Pacific Hake that is wild caught is converted into fish paste and processed into surimi which allows the enzyme inhibitor to be mixed into the fish paste to make crab sticks and other processed fish products. Over 70% of the Pacific Hake caught and processed into surimi is shipped to Japan and Korea.^[2]