SPEARFISHES OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 



525 



metallic bluish gray (hence the name silver) rang- 

 ing from deep color on the back to almost white 

 on the belly. Usually at this time there is smooth 

 gradation in color from the back to the belly, 

 though in a few specimens a sharp line separates 

 side and belly color. A few hours after death the 

 color of the back deepens to a dark lead gray, 

 when it is reasonable to call these fish black 

 marlins. 



In Japanese, Hawaiian, and central equatorial 

 Pacific waters the absence of stripes usually 

 distinguishes marlina from audax and ampla, but 

 Nakamura (1938) stated that stripes may some- 

 times be detected after death and complete re- 

 moval of the slime. We have seen only one speci- 

 men with faint stripes immediately after death. 

 Whitley (1954) described a stiff -finned marlin 

 that had pale blue bars when first caught, and 

 J. E. Morrow, in a personal communication, 

 stated that marlina are commonly striped in 

 Peruvian waters when alive. We suspect that 

 the stripes and the white color in life may be more 

 noticeable among the smaller sizes. 

 Distribution in the Pacific 



In the literature reviewed by Rosa (1950), 

 marlina has been reported in the eastern Pacific 

 from California to Peru, in New Zealand, Aus- 

 tralia, Hawaii, and Tahiti. Nakamura (1949) 

 reports tliat it occurs widely in the warm seas of 

 the Pacific and Indian Oceans and north off the 

 coast of Japan to about 41° N. latitude. No 

 verification has been obtained for rumors of the 

 occurrence of "black marlin" in California, though 

 both marlina and ampla appear to occur occa- 

 sionally off western Mexico (Carl L. Hubbs and 

 Robert L. Wisner, personal communication). 



In certain of these peripheral areas marlina is 

 apparently one of the abundant marlins, certainly 

 in the sport-fishing centers off Peru, New Zealand, 

 and Australia. Nakamura (1951) believes that 

 the center of its distribution is in the extreme 

 western Pacific and in the adjacent waters of the 

 South China Sea, Sulu Sea, and Celebes Sea. He 

 (1942) calls it the most abundant marlin off 

 Formosa and (1951) reported the catch by species 

 in Formosa for 1943 which, in numbers of fish tak- 

 en, ranks sailfish, marlina, ampla, and audax in 

 decreasing order. He (1951) also reported that 

 marlina is the most abundant spearfish off 

 Okinawa. Off Hawaii and in the equatorial 

 Pacific from south of Baja (California to the 



Caroline Islands it is much less abundant than 

 ampla. The scattered POFI catches (fig. 25) 

 occurred mostly in the vicinity of the Line Islands 

 and north of the Marquesas, but nowhere was 

 marlina numerous. In the Hawaiian fishery 

 marlina is so scarce that Otsu (1954) lumped it in 

 the catch data with sailfish, shortnosc spearfish, 

 and broadbill swordfish, which together comprised 

 less than a tenth of the total spearfish landings in 

 an average year. The nine Japanese mothership 

 expeditions to the vicinity of the Caroline Islands 

 in 1950 and 1951 (Van Campen 1952) had a com- 

 bined catch rate of less than .01 fish per 100 hooks 

 for marlina, which may be contrasted with the 

 catch rate of .53 for ampla. Despite this general 

 scarcity, marlina has been taken in sufficient num- 

 bers in the open Pacific to establish the strong 

 probability that its distribution is continuous from 

 America to Asia but that the concentrations are 

 peripheral off the coasts of the Americas, Asia, and 

 Australia. 



The intervening distances, together with ana- 

 tomical evidence, suggest that these concentrations 

 may be isolated enough for local varieties to be 

 evolving. A difference in color between marlina 

 from the central Pacific and from Peruvian areas 

 has been noted. Furthermore, the difference in 

 head length, length of pelvic, and height of the 

 anterior lobe of the first dorsal is somewhat greater 

 between samples of marlina than between samples 

 of the other species. Indeed, the overlap in the 

 height of the anterior lobe of the fii-st dorsal (fig. 

 17) between the samples of marlina from Hawaii, 

 New Zealand, and Australia is beyond the com- 

 monly accepted level of subspecific differentiation. 

 However, the samples are small and a sample 

 from the equatorial Pacific is intermediate in this 

 dimension, so we shall consider the differences as 

 merely varietal. 

 Size 



This is one of the largest species of bony fishes. 

 Nakamura (1949) stated that marlina attains a 

 body length of 350 cm. and a weight of 570 kg. 

 (1,250 lb.). The world's record angling catch 

 taken off Peru on August 4, 1953, weighed 1,560 

 pounds (Farrington 1953). The previous record, 

 1,352 pounds, was cauglit only 6 days earlier. 

 Farrington also reports that the fu-st 25 "black 

 marlin" caught by angling off Peru averaged 817 

 pounds with many weighing more than 1,000 

 pounds. It apparently reaches similar sizes oft' 



