 "Macrourus" species are important food fishes in the North Atlantic and off the Patagonian coast of Argentina.They are normally considered as bycatch in the north eastern Atlantic but they are landed and the weight of catches landed between 1990 and 2015 varied from almost none to 4,000 tonnes.There is a controversy about the identification of the type species of this genus, "Macrourus rupestris" was named as the type species by Bloch but this name is a synonym of "Coryphaenoides rupestris".