Dissostichus

Dissostichus, the toothfish, is a genus of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Nototheniidae, the notothens or cod icefish. These fish are found in the Southern Hemisphere. Toothfish are marketed for consumption in the United States as Chilean sea bass (or Chilean seabass) or less frequently as white cod. "Chilean sea bass" is a marketing name coined in 1977 by Lee Lantz, a fish wholesaler who wanted a more attractive name for selling the Patagonian toothfish to Americans. In 1994, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted "Chilean sea bass" as an "alternative market name" for Patagonian toothfish. The toothfish was remarkably successful in the United States, Europe and Asia, and earned the nickname "white gold" within the market. Toothfish are vital to the ecological structure of Southern Ocean ecosystems. For this reason, on 4 September a national day is dedicated to the toothfish in South Georgia.

==Taxonomy== Dissostichus was first described as a genus in 1898 by the Swedish zoologist Fredrik Adam Smitt, he was describing a new species from waters off Tierra del Fuego, Dissostichus eleginoides, which he placed as the only species in the new genus. Some authorities place this taxon in the subfamily Pleuragrammatinae, but the 5th edition of Fishes of the World does not include subfamilies in the Nototheniidae. The name of the genus Dissostichus is a compound of dissos which means "twofold" or "double" and stichus which means "row" or "line", an allusion to the two lateral lines of D. eleginoides.