Monkfish

Monkfish (Lophius americanus), nicknamed goosefish and anglerfish, is among the homeliest of edible species caught. It has a huge head and mouth, with lots of sharp teeth, and it feeds on almost anything. Another of the fish eaten by Europeans but not by Americans, it was of virtually no commercial value until after the 1960s; neither was it a common recreational fish. Monkfish was once a bycatch of the ground fisheries but was later caught for its own sake. Since the 1970s, because of the pressure on more favored fish like cod and haddock, monkfish has appeared in seafood markets, and the liver is prized in Asia. Most of the catch is landed on the East Coast from the Middle Atlantic states up through the Canadian maritime provinces.