Forget everything you thought you knew about the cusk

The despicable seal worm

The seal worm is so downright wicked that, on its way back to its host animal — the seal — it bores its way through the liver of smaller fish like cod or cusk. That slows the fish down, literally reducing growth to the point where they become easy prey for the seal. And the seal loves fish liver! That’s where the richest nutrition sits. So the worm ensures it gets back into the seal, where it reproduces… and the whole cycle starts all over again.

That’s the seal worm. Slightly annoying for those of us who prefer fish without worms — but for the worm, well… that’s just LIFE.

Cusk and wolffish from Norway are especially prone to worms, and that’s why we historically haven’t paid much attention to cusk here at Fiskerikajen. But that changes now!

The new cusk is here — trap-caught and worm-free

The cusk we’re getting now is trap-caught and comes as bycatch from a newly developed crab fishery in Norway using next-generation traps. And the quality is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Completely worm-free.

Each fish is landed alive with as little stress as possible, killed immediately, and bled properly. The meat has a clean, firm bite, slightly reminiscent of monkfish — juicy, with a clear flavour of its favourite foods: mussels and crabs.

Cusk WITHOUT seal worms

There may be several reasons why these cusk have no worms — and we don’t actually know for sure — buuut we have a few theories:

• Most Norwegian cusk are caught on longlines. When they struggle on the line, the stress may drive the worms into the flesh.
• In longline fisheries, cusk are kept in big tubs of ice water before slaughter. The focus is on processing the cod first, since they fetch a higher price. So the cusk may sit in icy water for too long, causing worms to migrate out into the flesh.
• And this one’s a freebie… maybe there just aren’t many seals in this part of Norway.

All fair guesses — and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But what matters is this: there are no worms in the trap-caught cusk!

So what kind of creature IS the cusk?

Imagine the deep, cold North Atlantic. Down there, between rocks, caves and wrecks, lives one of the most overlooked, underestimated — but fascinating — fish: the cusk, Brosme brosme. Its distribution is properly cold-water: the northern North Sea and Skagerrak, around the Norwegian coast up to Murmansk in the east, down to the US and Maine in the west, plus Iceland and southern Greenland. Denmark is basically the southern edge of its range.

Cusk looks like a cross between a cod and a ling. Same stocky, muscular build as cod, but the dorsal fin resembles the ling, and the head is similar too — just broader. It looks like the kind of guy you don’t want to meet in a dark alley. Colours vary from dark to reddish brown on top, fading to brown or grey on the sides and belly. Young fish can even have yellow stripes. A proper little bruiser.

A sizeable beast

Cusk grow slowly but can get big — up to about 1.2 metres and 20 kilos, though that’s rare. What we receive are usually between 2–5 kilos. They prefer depths of 180 metres and beyond, where no light reaches and the bottom is rough. Rarely near the coast. They like stone and gravel bottoms.

Spawning happens from April to July, and a medium-sized female can produce over two million eggs. The larvae drift near the surface at first, then — once just a few centimetres long — they sink back down to the darkness and the rocks, where they stay for life. Cusk aren’t the fastest fish in the ocean, but that’s fine — their prey isn’t exactly speedy either: crustaceans, molluscs and other bottom-dwelling critters.

Why trap-caught cusk is a game changer

Traditionally, cusk have been caught by bottom trawl or longline. But the cusk reaching our quay right now are trap-caught — and that is a huge win. Because the fish are landed alive and with minimal stress. The traps are large, so the fish don’t panic or thrash before being hauled up. And that matters — for meat quality, and perhaps even for the worm situation.

So: You really should try these trap-caught cusk.

They’re insanely tasty — and actually quite cheap — so it would be downright silly not to.