The perch is Finland's national fish and an Australian pest
In Finland the striped, red-finned perch is the national fish, and it even grows fat on Baltic herring in the country's brackish coastal waters. In Australia, where it was introduced for anglers, the same fish is known as redfin, has been declared a noxious species in New South Wales and is blamed for harming native fish.
The European perch is a predatory freshwater fish found across Europe, apart from the Iberian Peninsula, and east as far as the Kolyma River in Siberia. It is easy to recognise: greenish, with five to eight dark vertical bands and red fins underneath and at the tail. Older fish develop a hump between head and dorsal fin. It favours slow rivers, lakes and ponds, and does best in fairly shallow, clear lakes where light reaches deep.
Size varies greatly from one lake to another. Perch can live up to 22 years and reach about 60 centimetres. The officially recognised angling record, set by a Finnish fish in 2010, stands at 2.9 kilograms, though a heavier 3.75 kilogram perch was reported from the Meuse in the Netherlands that same year. Young perch eat plankton and small invertebrates; at around 120 millimetres they switch to other fish, including sticklebacks, roach, minnows and their own kind.
Spawning is striking. Males arrive first and chase females through the weeds, and each female lays a white ribbon of eggs up to a metre long, draped over water plants or submerged branches. The eggs hatch in one to two weeks. A popular idea holds that eggs hitch rides on the legs of wading birds to new ponds, but the evidence is only anecdotal. The fish in turn feeds ospreys, cormorants, kingfishers, pike, otters and the threatened Dalmatian pelican.
People prize it too, for firm, white, well-flavoured flesh. The first scientific account came from Peter Artedi in 1730, after he counted the fins and scales of Swedish lake perch, and Linnaeus based his 1758 name on that work. In 2013 nearly 29,000 tonnes were landed, over half by Russia. The fish icon in the factory game Factorio is a perch, modelled on the artist's daughter's favourite soft toy.
Source: European perch
