Raymond Townsend, and Joseph D. Vaughn, New 

 Jersey Division of Fish, Game, and Shellfish; 

 Donald Zacchae, Egbert Howell, and Al Kilthan, 

 New York State Department of Environmental 

 Conservation. 



We also wish to thank Michael Pennington for 

 suggesting use of the lognormal transformation to 

 determine mean vessel catches, and Judy Pentilla 

 and Louise Dery for determining ages of the 

 Atlantic mackerel. 



Literature Cited 



AlTCHISON, J., AND A. C. BROWN. 



1957. The log normal distribution with special reference to 

 its uses in economics. Camb. Univ. Press, Camb., 176 p. 

 ANDERSON, E. D. 



. 1979. Assessment of the Northwest Atlantic mackerel, 

 Scomber scrombrus, stock. U.S. Dep. Commer, NOAA 

 Tech. Rep. NMFS SSRF-732, 13 p. 

 BIGELOW, H. B., AND W. C. SCHROEDER. 



1953. Fishes of the Gulf of Maine. U.S. Fish. Wild. Serv., 

 Fish. Bull. 74, 577 p. 

 COCHRAN, W. G. 



1977. Sampling techniques. 3d ed. Wiley, N.Y., 428 p. 

 DEUEL, D. G. 



1973. The 1970 salt-water angling survey. U.S. Dep. 

 Commer, Cur Fish. Stat. 6200, 54 p. 

 FR.\SER, M. B., J. A. HENDERSON, AND J. F MCNAUS. 



1977. Survey of commercial sportfishing boats in the coas- 

 tal United States. Oreg. State Univ., Sea Grant Coll. 

 Program, Publ. ORESU-T-77-009, 28 p. 



WILK, S. J., W. W. MORSE, AND D. E. RALPH. 



1978. Length-weight relationships offish collected in the 

 New York Bight. Bull. N.J. Acad. Sci. 23(2):58-64. 



DARRYL J. Christensen 

 WALTER J. Clifford 



Northeast Fisheries Center Sandy Hook Laboratory 

 National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA 

 Highlands, NJ 07732 



than do their Atlantic counterparts. In addition, 

 the form of the spinous dorsal fin differs in fish 

 from the two ocean areas. The International Game 

 Fish Association ( IGFA), which keeps detailed and 

 precise records of the largest fish caught in various 

 sportfishing categories, maintains separate rec- 

 ords for Indo-Pacific and Atlantic sailfish. At pres- 

 ent, the largest sailfish caught by sportfishing 

 gear in the Pacific weighed 100.2 kg, and of the 14 

 different line test categories recorded by IGFA, 

 only two record Pacific sailfish weighed <70 kg. In 

 contrast, the largest Atlantic specimen weighed 

 58.1 kg and over half of the record catches were 

 <50 kg (International Game Fish Association 1980). 

 Morrow and Harbo ( 1969) stated that it was prob- 

 able that improved nutrition, better conditions for 

 growth, or some other favorable environmental 

 condition was responsible for the attainment of 

 the greater size in Indo-Pacific sailfish. 



Size data for Atlantic sailfish caught by the 

 Japanese longline fishery in various areas of the 

 Atlantic have recently become available in the 

 annual publications of the International Commis- 

 sion for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. ^ 

 These data show that unusually large sailfish also 

 occur in the Atlantic, specifically in the eastern 

 Atlantic off the coast of Africa between lat. 0° and 

 20° S (Figure 1; Areas F, G). Size frequencies from 

 the region indicate fish of substantially greater 

 size than from any of the other areas in the Atlan- 

 tic where size data from sailfish caught by the 

 longline fishery were available (Figure 2). I calcu- 

 lated the weights of eastern Atlantic specimens 

 using length-weight relationships developed by 

 various authors (Table 1). The results (Table 2) 

 show increasing variation in calculated weights as 

 fish length increases; however, regardless of which 



SIZE AND POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF 

 SAILFISH, ISTIOPHORUS PLATYPTERUS, 

 FROM THE EASTERN ATLANTIC OCEAN» 



Although Morrow and Harbo (1969) considered 

 the sailfish, Istiophorus platypterus, to be a single 

 worldwide species, other workers believe that the 

 Atlantic and Pacific forms are separate species 

 (Nakamura et al. 1968; Nakamura 1974). It has 

 long been recognized that Indo-Pacific specimens, 

 particularly those found along the coasts of 

 Panama and Mexico, attain a much greater size 



'Southeast Fisheries Center Contribution No. 80-05M. 



FISHERY BULLETIN: VOL. 78, NO. 3, 1980. 



^International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic 

 Tunas, Madrid, Data Records Vol. 10, p. 303-304 and Vol. 11, p. 

 267-270. 



Table l. — Coefficients of the length-weight relationship for 

 western Atlantic sailfish (Lenarz and Nakamura 1974; JoUey 

 1974) and eastern Pacific sailfish (Kume and Joseph 1969; Wares 

 and Sakagawa 1974). All lengths are from posterior rim of orbit 

 to fork except Jolley, which is from orbit to origin of caudal keels. 

 Calculated weights will be in kilograms except for Lenarz and 

 Nakamura which will be in pounds. 



805 



