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Masago

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Bitemybun's family recipes with complete meal planner and recipe guide.

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The capelin or caplin, Mallotus villosus, is a small forage fish of the smelt family found in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans and masago are its roe. In summer, it grazes on dense swarms of plankton at the edge of the ice shelf. Larger capelin also eat a great deal of krill and other crustaceans. Whales, seals, cod, squid, mackerel, beluga whales and seabirds all prey on capelin, in particular during the spawning season of the capelin while it migrates southwards. Capelin spawn on sandy beaches and sandy bottom at the age of 2–6 years, and have an extremely high mortality rate on the beaches after spawning, for males close to 100% mortality. Males reach 20 cm in length, while females are up to 25 cm long. They are olive-colored dorsally, shading to silver on sides. Males have a translucent ridge on both sides of their bodies. The ventral aspects of the males iridesce reddish at the time of spawn.

Check out our new cookbook

Bitemybun's family recipes with complete meal planner and recipe guide.

Try it out for free with Kindle Unlimited:

Read for free

Joost Nusselder, the founder of Bite My Bun is a content marketer, dad and loves trying out new food with Japanese food at the heart of his passion, and together with his team he's been creating in-depth blog articles since 2016 to help loyal readers with recipes and cooking tips.