6.3 Control or Alteration of Chemical Features of 

 the Environment 



The relationship between the community popula- 

 tion structure, though presently unknown, and the 

 ecosystem will ultimately depend on man's effects 

 upon the high-seas environment in which T. belone 

 lives. Hypersaline conditions resulting from the 

 reduced freshwater flow of the Nile River are in- 

 creasing in the eastern Mediterranean, from which 

 two juveniles of T. belone are reported, so that, if this 

 were to constitute an important nursery ground for 

 the juveniles, high salinity water would be expected to 

 be unfavorable to this stenotypic species. 



Man-made pollution, especially from oil and other 

 petrochemicals, sewage pollution, and radioactivity, 

 is potentially detrimental via the food chain, even to 

 an epipelagic species such as T. belone. For example, 

 Horn, Teal, and Backus (1970) found lumps of crude 

 oil residue to be widely dispersed in the Mediterra- 

 nean Sea and the eastern North Atlantic Ocean, 

 stressing that toxic fractions of hydrocarbons have 

 been isolated from these lumps. They found large 

 amounts of tar in the stomachs of Atlantic sauries 

 collected southwest of Sardinia, and concluded that 

 "this ingestion of the tar by sauries provides a direct 

 introduction of a material known to be toxic into the 

 oceanic food web." Because T. belone feeds mainly 

 upon sauries, there is a possibility that an important 

 part of the food web of T. belone could be affected if 

 sauries are eventually killed by the toxic hydrocar- 

 bons. Further, concentrations of toxic hydrocarbons 

 which were sublethal to the sauries could be 

 theoretically concentrated within their bodies and 

 eventually in T. belone and persons feeding upon 

 them. Other man-made components, especially the 

 chlorinated hydrocarbons, should be expected to oc- 

 cur in the tissues of T. belone, and could conveivably 

 affect spawning or other metabolic processes, in addi- 

 tion to becoming concentrated in various tissues eaten 

 by man. 



6.4 Control or Alteration of the Biological Fea- 

 tures of the Environment 



See 6.3. 



7 POND FISH CULTURE 

 Not applicable. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



I am especially grateful to Francesca R. LaMonte 

 who gave me her personal library of billfish literature, 

 including many valuable and accurate translations by 

 her of the foreign literature on billfish. 



My colleague, C. Richard Robins, kindly reviewed 

 the manuscript and has always stimulated many dis- 

 cussions on billfish and other ancillary matters. The 

 late John K. Howard and Al Pflueger were instrumen- 

 tal in supplying information, specimens, and contacts 

 which permitted our study of spearfish; the many 

 others who enabled this study are acknowledged by 

 Robins and de Sylva (1960, 1963). 



The research for this paper was supported in part 

 by the National Science Foundation, grants NSF GB- 

 893 and NSF G-23745/GN-2676; the U.S. Bureau of 

 Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, contracts BSFW 14-16- 

 0008-775/DI-14-16-0008-957; the Sport Fishing Insti- 

 tute, Washington, D.C.; the Port Aransas Rod and 

 Reel Club; and the Maytag Chair of Ichthyology, Uni- 

 versity of Miami. 



LITERATURE CITED 



AGASSIZ, L. 



1843. Poissons cycloides. Recherches sur les poissons fossiles 

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 ANONYMOUS. 



1968. Relentless sea relinquishes rarity to resourceful re- 

 searchers. Fla. Conserv. News 3(11):5. [Photograph and 

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 BARCELOYC, F. 



1868. Catalogo metodico de los peces que habitan 6 frecuen- 

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 BEN-TUVIA, A. 



1953. Mediterranean fishes of Israel. Bull. Isr. Sea Fish. 



Res. Stn. Haifa 8:1-40. 

 1966. Red Sea fishes recently found in the Mediterranean. 

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 BINI, G. 



1968. Atlante dei pesci delle coste Italiane. Vol. 6. Mondo 

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 BONAPARTE, C. L. P. 



1832-1841. Iconografia della fauna Italica per le quattro clas- 

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 BRIGGS, J. C. 



1958. A list of Florida fishes and their distribution. Bull. 

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1872. Pesci. In E. Cornalia, Fauna d'ltalia, Part 3. Val- 

 lardi, Milano, 208 p. 

 CAVALIERE, A. 



1962. Notizie su biologia e pesca de Tetrapturus belone Raf.. 

 cenni sull'adulto e descrizione di un suo rarissimo stadio gio- 

 vanile. Boll. Pesca Piscic. Idrobiol., New Ser. 15(2):171- 

 176. 

 COCCO, A. 



1884. Indice ittiologico del mare di Messina. Nat. Sicil. 

 5:35-40. 

 COSTA, O. 



1850. Fauna del regno di Napoli . . . Pesci. Naples, Azzolino, 

 Part 1(49):10-11. 

 CUVIER, G., and A. VALENCIENNES. 



1831. Histoire de naturelle poissons. Paris, 8:1-509. 



129 



