yo PAPERS FROM TORTUGAS LABORATORY vol. xxxiv 



The food of the barracuda consists chiefly of fishes, although squids occa- 

 sionally are taken. Large fish are cut into great lumps of several pounds' weight 

 by the shearing palatine teeth before being swallowed. This barracuda was com- 

 monly seen lying near schooling fishes, which warily avoided it and seemed 

 usually to escape its sudden dashes. It is readily caught by trolling. 



The color is changeable in high degree. The young from one to several inches 

 in length have a lateral dark stripe. The larger fish show a banded pattern that 

 appears also in the young, as well as a plain one, countershaded and marked only 

 by a number of black spots along the lateral line. 



The plain pattern is that in which the fish usually swims or rests high above 

 the bottom. In this phase the green above passes gradually to silver on the side, 

 and this more abruptly to plain white upon the belly. In this phase the fish is 

 readily seen from above, but if viewed at even a short distance by a diver working 

 at its own or lower level it seems gray, and is readily lost in the blue-gray haze 

 of the water. In the banded phase the body is crossed by seven distinct bars. This 

 pattern is displayed when the fish rests over dark or variegated bottom. For ex- 

 ample, of two 375-mm. fish seen at once at a dock at Fort Jefferson, one lay in 

 the shadow of a cluster of piles, and the other was in bright sunlight over light- 

 colored sand. The first was dark and conspicuously banded; the second, pale and 

 uniform in coloration except for its countershading. Another observation was 

 made upon a group of young barracudas, about 125 mm. long, at the Laboratory 

 dock. Some were over light-colored sandy bottom, and were light and uniform 

 in color. Others were over bottom littered with brown algae, black sea-urchin 

 spines, and dark-colored waste, and these were darker and plainly banded. 



W. H. L. 



Gudger has written an extensive account entitled "Sphyraena barracuda; its 

 morphology, habits, and history" (Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. 252, 1918, pp. 53- 

 108, 5 figs, 7 pis.), in which he discusses, among other matters, the ferocity of this 

 fish. That it will attack man occasionally is a well-established fact. 



West Indies, Brazil, and northward on the Atlantic coast of the United States. 



S.F.H. 

 Sphyraena picudilla Poey 



Not rare. One specimen, 150 mm. long, had the body scarcely compressed; 

 pectorals not reaching ventrals; 132 to 134 scales with pores; 17 in series keeled, 

 these chiefly on caudal peduncle. 



Color olivaceous above, silvery on sides and belly; a median dark stripe from 

 interorbital space to insertion of second dorsal; paired dorsolateral and ocular 

 stripes from snout to caudal, the former tangent to the eye above and reaching 

 upper margin of caudal base, the latter passing through pupil; both paired dark 

 lines, especially the ocular, breaking up to form spots on trunk. W. H. L. 



This barracuda, besides being smaller, is distinguished from the greater one 

 by the position of the ventral fins, which are inserted under the origin of the 

 spinous dorsal in the smaller one and well in advance of that fin in the greater 



