Striped marlin
| Striped marlin | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Striped Marlin ( Kajikia audax ) |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Kajikia audax | ||||||||||||
| ( Philippi , 1887) |
The Indo-Pacific striped marlin ( Kajikia audax ) forms - in this respect comparable to the sailfish and with its Atlantic sister species, the white marlin - a taxon of fast, epipelagic tip predators that is widespread in warmer seas around the world and is also of great importance for sport fishing .
Etymology: marlin (allegedly) short for Dutch marlinspike , a beak-like tool for untangling ship ropes; from Dutch maren (related to English to moor ) "to bind".
features
The body is elongated and clearly flattened laterally, the rostrum is quite long (purpose see White Marlin ). It grows to 4.4 m long and weighs 420 kg (females; males stay smaller). At the age of 8 he is on average 2.2 m long. (To determine the age, sections of fin rays are necessary.) Many small scales, each with a blunt tip (or two), are embedded in the skin. The jaw teeth are very small and there is no gill trap . The back is dark blue, usually with 18–22 narrow, light blue saddle bandages (these can become lighter or more indistinct due to mood, through movement of the skin chromatophores ); The sides and belly are lighter or silver-white. The fins are as described for the Atlantic White Marlin, but the dorsal fin is higher than the trunk and without black spots; the pectoral fin is not rounded, but sickle-shaped (but not stiff). The ventral fins are more brown than blue, often light at the bases.
- Fin formula : D 42–48, A 18–24, P 18–22.
behavior
Like its relatives, this marlin lives epipelagically above the marine temperature thermocline , i. H. at a depth of 0–200 m, but in cooler areas than the Blue Marlin . Near the coast it only occurs where the shelf drops steeply. Usually it is single, in pairs or in groups it only swims during spawning time. Its diet consists of fish (e.g. herrings, sardines, perches, horse and mackerel) and squids (only rarely crabs). It goes without saying that such an “armed” predatory fish can occasionally injure or even kill itself or other living beings (conspecifics, etc.) while it is feeding or spawning. B. broken “spear” parts found in other marlins, sharks and whales, not just in boat planks. There is no evidence that he uses his “weapon” for defense (or even aggressively).
distribution
The subtropical species migrates to tropical and warm-temperate areas at suitable temperatures (20–26 ° C). In the Pacific there is a horseshoe-shaped distribution area (from Japan via Ecuador and Peru to Australia ; the north coast of New Zealand is touched; possibly one can distinguish two populations with separate spawning areas); in the North Pacific it is also common around Hawaii . In the Indic , the population is densest near the south- east African coast, in the western Arabian Sea , in the Bay of Bengal and off north-western Australia. (Areas remote from the coast are unproductive and attract fewer predatory fish. Nevertheless, it is a real deep sea fish and the most common type of marlin.) Contact with K. albida at the Cape of Good Hope is insufficient to prevent the two main species from developing separately.
protection
The striped marlin is a popular food fish, especially for Japanese cuisine. As with related species, it is propagated among sport fishermen to release non-capital individuals after they have been caught. In order to dampen desires as much as possible, the (at least given) mercury content of the meat is often pointed out. In the Pacific, around 12,000 t were caught annually around 2005, which is said to be far below the amount (of 24,000 t) that the species can "endure" without endangering. In 2008, the striped marlin was declared an endangered species in the USA - especially because of the rapid increase in industrial longline fishing .
Web link
- Striped Marlin on Fishbase.org (English)
- Kajikia audax inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: Collette, B., Acero, A., Boustany, A., Canales Ramirez, C., Cardenas, G., Carpenter, KE, Di Natale, A., Die, D., Fox, W., Graves , J., Hinton, M., Juan Jorda, M., Minte Vera, C., Miyabe, N., Montano Cruz, R., Nelson, R., Restrepo, V., Schaefer, K., Schratwieser, J ., Serra, R., Sun, C., Uozumi, Y. & Yanez, E., 2011. Retrieved February 4, 2014.