FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



337 



Color. — Steel blue above, glistening white lower 

 down on the sides and on the belly. The sides 

 are without markings below the lateral line, 

 except for a few dark spots below the pectoral fin, 

 but are marked above the lateral line with dark 

 wavy bands, in various patterns. 



Size. — About the same as E. pelamis, i. e. 

 growing to about 2% feet. 



General range. — This, like its relative pelamis 

 is a tropical-oceanic fish, widespread on the high 

 seas, in all the great oceans. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — False albacores 

 are picked up from time to time near Woods Hole, 

 in July or August. But the only records of them 

 within our Gulf are of 200 to 300 taken in a trap 

 at Barnstable, in the autumn of 1948, 81 and of 28 

 taken in another trap in Cape Cod Bay, near Sand- 

 wich, on September 11, 1949. 82 Like various other 

 tropical fishes they come our way only as strays 

 from wanner seas ; they are likely to be in schools 

 whenever they reach our Gulf. 



Common bonito Sarda sarda (Bloch) 1793 



Bonito; Skipjack; Horse mackerel 



Jordan and Evermann, 1896-1900, p. 872. 



Description. — This bonito is shaped much like a 

 small tuna, being thick and stout bodied, about 

 one-fourth as deep as it is long (not counting the 

 caudal fin), and similarly tapering to a pointed 

 snout and very slender caudal peduncle. It is 

 tuna-like also, in that its body is scaled all over, 

 that its caudal peduncle has median longitudinal 

 keels, and that its two dorsal fins are so close to- 

 gether that they are practically confluent. But 



'i Reported to us by Frank Mather of the Woods Hole Oceangraphic 

 Institution. All of these, weighing 2,498 pounds, were caught on September 

 16 in the trap of John Vetorino. 



» Schuck, Copeia, 1951, p. 98. 



the shape of its fins distinguishes it at a glance from 

 a small tuna, the only regular member of the Gulf 

 of Maine fish fauna, with which it is apt to be con- 

 fused, 83 its first dorsal being relatively much longer 

 than that of the tuna (about one-third as long as 

 the body, not counting the caudal, and with about 

 21 spines), and its second dorsal considerably 

 longer than high, whereas the second dorsal is at 

 least as high as it is long in the tuna. 



The mouth, too, of the common bonito is rela- 

 tively larger than that of the tuna, gaping back 

 as far as the hind margin of the eye, and its jaw 

 teeth are larger, with the two to four in the front 

 of the lower jaw noticeably larger than the others. 

 The shape of its first dorsal, with nearly straight 

 upper margin marks it off from the oceanic bonito 

 (p. 335), also from the false albacore (p. 336), in 

 both of which this fin is very deeply concave in 

 outline; the uniform scaliness of its body, also, is 

 diagnostic, as contrasted with them. 



We need only note further that its first dorsal 

 fin is triangular, tapering regularly backward, with 

 only slightly concave upper edge; that the margins 

 of the second dorsal and anal fins are deeply concave ; 

 that it has 7 or 8 dorsal finlets and 7 anal finlets; 

 that its tail fin is lunate, much broader than long; 

 and that its lateral line is not deeply bowed below 

 the second dorsal, but is only wavy. 



Color. — The color of this bonito is so distinctive 

 as to be a ready field mark to its identity, for 

 while it is steely blue above with silvery lower part 

 of the sides and abdomen, like most of the mack- 

 erel tribe, the upper part of the sides are barred 

 with 7 to 20 narrow dark bluish bands running 

 obliquely downward and forward across the lateral 

 line. While young its back is transversely barred 



*> No one should take a bonito for a large mackerel, its dorsal fins being 

 close together, while those of the mackerel are far apart. 



Figure 180. — Common bonito {Sarda sarda). After Smitt. 



