SPEARFISHES OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC 



521 



to a dark, slate gray on the back and to black on 

 the first dorsal. We have seen no evidence of 

 stripes and, according to Nakamura (1949), it 

 never has them. 



Distribution in the Pacific 



According to Nakamura (1951), this pelagic 

 species does not enter coastal or enclosed seas. 

 Off Japan it occm-s south of 35° N. latitude and 

 rather densely in the waters east of Formosa and 

 the Philippines from November to January. 

 Nowhere is it abundant enough to be of impor- 

 tance to the fishery. In our POFI fishing we 

 have taken only the 8 specimens recorded in 

 appendix table lA; their distribution is indicated 

 in figure 23. In the Hawaiian fishery it is one 

 of the miscellaneous spearfishes that comprises 

 onlj' a small fraction of the total spearfish catch. 



On the first six Japanese mothership expeditions 

 to the vicinity of the Caroline Islands (Ego and 

 Otsu, 1952) it was combined with the saiLlsh in 

 the statistics, and on each of these trips the catch 

 of the two species together averaged only from 

 .02 to .07 per 100 hooks. 



Size 



This is the smallest of the spearfishes and, 

 according to Nakamura (1949), attains a weight 

 of only 44 pounds, but the POFI specimens which 

 we have weighed from the central Pacific ranged 

 from 18 to 51 pounds. Based on the data ob- 

 tained from the Honolulu market by the Hawaiian 

 Division of Fish and Game (table 3), the maxi- 

 mum weight found in 177 specimens was 114 

 pounds. However, the modal size was approx- 

 imately 38 pounds. 



FinvRE 215. — Distribution uf POFI catches of shortiio.so spearfish, Tetraplurus angusliroslris. Fractions indicate stations 

 at which catches were reported out of the total fished; decimals indicate average catch per 100 hooks per day. 



