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Figure l. — Areas and number of sailfish sampled from the Japanese longline fishery in the Atlantic, 1975-76. 

 Data are from Data Records 10, 11, International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (see text 

 footnote 2). 



Table 2. — Estimated weights of sailfish caught by longline gear 

 in the eastern Atlantic (Figure 1; Areas F, G) using length- weight 

 relationships from various authors. 



Author 



Smallest' 

 (148^5 cm) 



Average 

 (174,8 cm) 



Largest 

 (223.5 cm) 



Lenarz and Nakamura (1974)^ 

 Jolley (1974)^ Male 



Female 

 Kume and Joseph (1969) 

 Wares and Sakagawa (1974) 



Average length in other five areas 140.7 cm 



Average weight in other five areas 18.6 kg (Lenarz and Nakamura formula) 



'There was one specimen measuring 116-120 cm fork length but was 

 excluded from this demonstration. 



^Lenarz and Nakamura conducted their calculations in inches and pounds I 

 converted results using their formula into kilograms for this demonstration, 



^Although Jolley s formula indicates that males in the eastern Atlantic attain a 

 greater weight at a given length than females, available evidence indicates that 

 this is not true for western Atlantic sailfish Only a few females in Jolley's sample 

 were as large as the average-sized eastern Atlantic specimen and the indica- 

 tion that males attain a greater weight is probably a result of extrapolation of 

 Jolley's formula beyond the limits of his data. 



formula one uses, it is clear that the eastern At- 

 lantic specimens are unusually large fish (it 

 should be noted that estimated weights in Table 2 

 may be significantly affected by an unknown 

 logarithmic bias inherent in the length-weight 



parameters). Using Lenarz and Nakamura's 

 (1974) formula, for example, the average weight of 

 sailfish sampled in the eastern Atlantic was only 

 21.4 kg less than the current all-tackle world rec- 

 ord for Atlantic sailfish, and the largest specimens 

 were 21.8 kg larger than the all-tackle record. 

 There is currently little sport fishing in the east- 

 ern Atlantic; however, between 1971 and 1975 

 seven world records were established for Atlantic 

 sailfish off the coast of Angola, including the cur- 

 rent all-tackle record of 58.1 kg. 



There are striking similarities between the dis- 

 tribution of sailfish in the Pacific and Atlantic 

 Oceans. In both oceans, sailfish appear to be most 

 abundant on the western side and have a greater 

 north-south range than on the eastern side (Koto 

 et al. 1959; Kume and Joseph 1969; Ueyanagi et al. 

 1970). The largest specimens are apparently lo- 

 cated on the eastern side of their respective oceans 

 and in a fairly localized area. Size data on sailfish 

 from the eastern Pacific presented by Kume and 

 Joseph (1969) and Wares and Sakagawa (1974) 



806 



