The Japanese amberjack or yellowtail, ''Seriola quinqueradiata'', is a species of

jack Jack may refer to: Places * Jack, Alabama, US, an unincorporated community * Jack, Missouri, US, an unincorporated community * Jack County, Texas, a county in Texas, USA People and fictional characters * Jack (given name), a male given name, ...

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

in the family

Carangidae The Carangidae are a family of ray-finned fish which includes the jacks, pompanos, jack mackerels, runners, and scads. It is the largest of the six families included within the order Carangiformes. Some authorities classify it as the only family ...

. It is native to the northwest

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

, ranging from

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

(called ),

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...

(called ), and

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

. It is greatly appreciated in

, where it is called ''hamachi'' or ''buri'' (). These fish are eaten either cooked or raw and are a seasonal favourite in the colder months when the meat has a higher fat content. Amberjack is typically thought of as a winter delicacy of

Toyama Toyama may refer to: Places and organizations * Toyama Prefecture, a prefecture of Japan located in the Hokuriku region on the main Honshu island * Toyama, Toyama, the capital city of Toyama Prefecture * Toyama Station, the main station of Toyama, ...

and the

Hokuriku region The was located in the northwestern part of Honshu, the main island of Japan. It lay along the Sea of Japan within the Chūbu region, which it is currently a part of. It is almost equivalent to Koshi Province and Hokurikudō area in pre-modern ...

. Although it is frequently listed on menus as "yellowtail tuna," it is a fish of an entirely different family, the Carangidae, rather than the family

Scombridae The mackerel, tuna, and bonito family, Scombridae, includes many of the most important and familiar food fishes. The family consists of 51 species in 15 genera and two subfamilies. All species are in the subfamily Scombrinae, except the butterfly ...

that includes

tuna A tuna is a saltwater fish that belongs to the tribe Thunnini, a subgrouping of the Scombridae (mackerel) family. The Thunnini comprise 15 species across five genera, the sizes of which vary greatly, ranging from the bullet tuna (max length: ...

mackerel Mackerel is a common name applied to a number of different species of pelagic fish, mostly from the family Scombridae. They are found in both temperate and tropical seas, mostly living along the coast or offshore in the oceanic environment. ...

s, and

bonito Bonitos are a tribe of medium-sized, ray-finned predatory fish in the family Scombridae – a family it shares with the mackerel, tuna, and Spanish mackerel tribes, and also the butterfly kingfish. Also called the tribe Sardini, it consists of ...

s. Some of the fish consumed are caught wild, but a substantial amount is farmed (about 120,000

tonnes The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United States ...

per year). To populate the pens, every May, workers fish for the small wild fry (called ''

mojako Fish go through various biological life cycle, life stages between fertilization and adulthood. The life of a fish start as spawn (biology), spawned fish egg, eggs which hatch into immotile larvae. These larval hatchlings are not yet capable ...

''), which can be found under floating

seaweed Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of '' Rhodophyta'' (red), ''Phaeophyta'' (brown) and ''Chlorophyta'' (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as ...

. They scoop out the seaweed together with the ''mojako'' and put the ''mojako'' in cages in the sea. The small fry grow until they reach 10 to 50 grams in mass; the fry are called ''inada'' in eastern Japan ( Kantō). They are then sold to aquaculturists, who grow them until they reach 3 kilograms (youth, called ''hamachi'') or 5 kilograms (adult, called ''buri''). These days, most aquaculturists use extruded pellets to feed the fish. File:Mojako.jpg, Juvenile Japanese amberjack File:Buri no suimono 01.jpg, ''Suimono'' (clear soup) with Japanese amberjack Bangeo-hoe.jpg, ''Bangeo- hoe'' (), raw amberjack

References

* *

External links

* {{Authority control Fish described in 1845 Fish of Hawaii Fish of Japan Japanese seafood Seriola Fish of Korea