FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



359 



Figure 188. — Blue martin (Makaira ampla). Drawing 

 by Jessie Sawyer, based on Bahama and Marthas 

 Vineyard specimens. Left, a piece of skin from the 

 upper part of the side of the Marthas Vineyard speci- 

 men, with epidermis scraped off to show scales, about 

 twice natural size. 



rather abrupt transition to much paler gray-blue 

 lower down the sides and on the lower surface, 

 the belly being as dark as the lower part of the 

 sides; the sides cross-marked with about 13 

 indistinct violet-blue stripes, about 1 to 1% 

 inches wide on a fish 8 feet long, showing pale 

 against the dark blue of the upper parts of the 

 body, but dark against the paler blue of the lower 

 part of the sides. First and second dorsal fins, 

 pectoral and ventral fins, and first anal fin dark 

 rather vivid blue. Caudal fin of about the same 

 color as upper part of trunk; second anal fin of 

 same pale gray-blue as the belly. 86 



Size. — Blue marlins run fully as large as sword- 

 fish. Reports are current of fish of 1 ,000 pounds 

 being harpooned; the rod and reel record is 742 

 pounds." Many weighing more than 500 pounds 

 are caught off the north coast of Cuba and on the 

 Bahamas side of the Straits of Florida every year, 97 

 and one taken on the southern part of Browns 

 Bank, weighed 575 pounds dressed, when landed, 



•• Description based on a "blue" about 8 feet long from tip of bill to fork of 

 tail, and weighing 169 pounds, fish taken near Bimini, Bahamas, June 1941, 

 by R. W. Foster, mounted by the well-known flsb taxidermist, H. Pfleuger 

 of Miami, Fla., and now in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. 



•' Caught at Bimini, Bahamas, June 19, 1949, by Aksel Wichfeld. 



" See Farrington (in Vesey-Fitzgerald and Lamonte, Game Fish of the 

 World, 1949, p. 154) for a readable account of the blue marlin of Bahaman 

 waters as a game fish. 



or about 700 pounds alive. A very large one may 

 measure as much as 15 feet, 98 but the rod and reel 

 record fish, mentioned above, was only 12 feet 

 10% inches long. Another fish caught in the Ba- 

 hamas weighed 650 pounds (not dressed), and 

 measured 12 feet 1 inch; a third, of 621 pounds 

 was 12 feet 3 inches long. 99 



General range — Warm parts of the northwestern 

 Atlantic, straying northward to the Gulf of Maine. 

 It has been reported near Sable Island, but the 

 very small specimen in question may have been a 

 white marlin (p. 360). 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — This southern 

 warm-water fish was reported from the South 

 Channel, between Georges Bank and Nantucket 

 Shoals, between 1877 and 1880, by the fishing 

 schooner Phoenix. No other marlins that we can 

 be sure were blues were reported within the limits 

 of the Gulf of Maine until September 5, 1930, 

 when a small one 6 feet 10 inches long, 1 was har- 

 pooned on the southern part of Browns Bank. 

 And a very large one was caught in that same 

 vicinity by the Col. Lindbergh the following July, 



" The blue marlin is said to reach 26 feet, but we think this much exagger- 

 ated. 



« Reported to us by Frank Mather, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic 

 Institution. 



' This specimen is in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. 



