Amajak • Sand Lance

Usually growing to a length of 20 to 31 cm, northern sand lances are long, slender fish with a pointed snout and long, spiny dorsal and anal fins. Their caudal fin is forked, and their body is covered with small scales. Both the upper and lower jaws of this fish are toothless, and the lower jaw protrudes slightly. They have white bellies and bronze to blue-green backs. 

Northern sand lances live in shallow water with fine gravel or sandy bottoms where they burrow into the bottom to rest. In the Atlantic region, there is interest in establishing a commercial fishery, but little is known about the fish and there is currently no efficient means of catching them. However, larval and adult sand lances are important prey items for commercially important fish such as yellowtail flounder, cod, and haddock. Sand lances eat planktonic organisms, especially copepods. 

Spawning starts in late November and ends in late February on sand in shallow waters in which the eggs sink and adhere to the substrate. After hatching, the larvae rise to the surface for a few weeks, but when they are a few centimetres long, they descend to the bottom and remain there until maturity. 

The distribution of the northern sand lance is not completely known because it is easily confused with the inshore American sand lance, Ammodytes americanus. It is differentiated only by the fact that the northern sand lance is considered an offshore species. Roughly, the species is distributed along Greenland, south to the Scotian Shelf; its distribution in the Arctic is limited, as it is only found along the eastern coast of Baffin Island.

Source: Canada's Polar Life

Main Photo Credit: Northern sand lance, a key species in the arctic food web. by NOAA Stellwagen Bank NMS, 2018. https://twitter.com/NOAASBNMS/status/1043254173498781697. Image in Public Domain.