Atlantic sailfish
| Atlantic sailfish | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Two men holding a freshly caught Atlantic sailfish | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | |
| Phylum: | |
| Class: | |
| Order: | |
| Family: | |
| Genus: |
Lacépède, 1801
|
| Species: |
I. albicans
|
| Binomial name | |
| Istiophorus albicans (Latreille, 1804)
|
|
Lua error in Module:Taxonbar/candidate at line 22: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
The Atlantic sailfish (Istiophorus albicans) is a species of marine fish in the family Istiophoridae of the order Perciformes. It is found in the Atlantic Oceans and the Caribbean Sea, except for large areas of the central North Atlantic and the central South Atlantic, from the surface to depths of 200 m (656 ft). The Atlantic sailfish is related to the marlin.
Tests in the 1920s estimated that the Atlantic sailfish was capable of short sprints of up to 111 kilometres per hour; however, more conservative estimates of 37 to 55 kilometres per hour are more widely accepted.[1]
Atlantic sailfish hunt schooling fish, such as sardines, anchovies and mackerel although they also feed on crustaceans and cephalopods.
Description
The Atlantic sailfish is a metallic blue fish with a large sail-like dorsal fin and a long and pointed bill-like snout. It is dark bluish-black on the upperparts and lighter on the sides (counter-shading), with about twenty bluish horizontal bars along the flanks; the underparts are silvery white. The tail fin is strongly forked. The fins are bluish-black and the front dorsal fin is speckled with small black spots. The bases of the anal fins are pale.[2]
The length of this fish is up to 3.15 m (10.3 ft) and the maximum published weight is 58.1 kg (128.1 lb).[3]
Distribution and habitat
The Atlantic sailfish is a pelagic fish of tropical and temperate waters in the Atlantic Ocean. It ranges from approximately 40°N in the northwestern Atlantic to 40°S in the southwestern Atlantic, and 50°N in the northeastern Atlantic to 32°S in the southeastern Atlantic. It is a migratory species and moves about the open ocean and into the Mediterranean Sea. Its depth range is from warm surface waters down to about 200 m (656 ft).[3]
References
- ↑ Burton, M. and Burton, R. (2002) International Wildlife Encyclopedia. Marshall Cavendish, New York.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Froese, Rainer and Pauly, Daniel, eds. (2006). "Istiophorus albicans" in FishBase. January 2006 version.
- Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
External links
| Swordfish |
|
 |
|||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marlin |
|
||||||||
| Related topics | |||||||||
