The silver scabbardish – A giant round eye, a pitch-black pupil in a silvery-golden iris, a long, slightly crooked snout with sharp pointed tusks jutting out of the mouth. The thought of  this monster’s bite sends cold shivers up the spine.

Dead it lies on the icy fish counter, dead but still terrifying, alien but still beautiful: the silver scabbardfish. So different from the common trout, perch or salmon filets, it seems it must have come from another world. Its body is over one meter long and slender. Its scaleless skin shines like freshly polished silver and so delicate that slight shadows adrumbrate its strong muscles like the six pack of an athlete, revealing the elegance and agility of a true predator. Like a horse’s mane the dorsal fin stretches continuously from the head to the tiny tail, enhancing its wild appearance.

This strange fish can grow to over two meters long and is wildly distributed throughout the temperate oceans. Its distribution follows the continental shelf, along its edge and upper slope down to several hundred meters. It can also be found on plateaus of offshore seamounts, which rise from the several thousand meter depths of the Atlantic up to about a few hundred meters below the surface. Here, the silver scabbardfish hunts prey such as squid, crustaceans and fish.

The silver scabbardfish belongs to the family of cutlassfish which comprises around 40 species named scabbardfishes, frostfishes or hairtails. They all have in common the long, slender body and a tiny or nonexistent caudal fin. Better known than the silver scabbardfish is the black scabbardfish, which looks very similar to its brother but changes its original copper-like color of the deep water to a dark black once it is brought to surface. As such it is sold as the well-known delicacy “espada preta” at Madeiras fish markets.

The fish monger grabs the large animal from its icy bed,lays it down onto the counter, and cuts two slices out of the body with a sharp knife. Prepared in the oven the scabbardfish tastes delicious, put the pleasure of eating it cannot rival the thrill of watching this fierce predator alive, hunting in its deep blue environmentin all its alien, terrifying beauty.

1801. F. Henning aus Marcus Elieser Bloch »Systema ichthyologiae« 1801.