the northern part is the place of origin of the Kuroshio and the 

 currents clearly point norths, the central part in general is an 

 area in iiriiich the Equatorial Current impinges upon the Philippine 

 Islands and the currents have no definitely fixed directions &^cl 

 in most of the southern part the currents run mainly eastward j, 

 showing that it is within the Equatorial Countercurrento Thus 

 ooeanographic conditions appear to be different in each of these 

 three parts of the sea areao 



From the fishing situation as it appears in table 3 it 

 is clear that as one goes south the density of occurrence of 

 the black marlin gradually decreases, howeverp it must be taken 

 into account that there is a break of more than 2 months between 

 the begirmiog and end of the investigationo 



In data from investigations in the area formerly under 

 the jurisdiction of the South Seas Government -Generals, which 

 continues to the eastward of this sea area, the species were 

 not sufficiently differentiated j and consequently it is dif- 

 ficult to make a full compsirison with the material in table 3o 

 Data from the adjacent Celebes Sea area to the west are also 

 inadequate in this respecto If s however^ we consider both 

 the distributional and migrational pattern in the waters east 

 of Fonnosas as described abovej, and the situation in the East 

 Philippine Sea, the migrations of the spearfishes in the 

 Kuroshio current area^ which is thought to be most deeply 

 related to our coastal waters, are probably in general as 

 follows § 



(1) At the beginning of the northeast monsoon the white 

 marlin appear in the central part of the Kuroshio east of 

 Formosao They gradually begin to move northward j, and around 

 Ap" il they become scarce in these waterSo 



(2) At about the same time as the white marlinj, but 

 farther offshore than the central part of the Kuroshio Current 

 area east of Formosaj the short=uosed spearfish occurs in con- 

 siderable concentrationo 



(3) The striped marlin appears in the central part of 

 the Kuroshio current area somewhat later than the white marlinp 

 and about April their occurrence becomes sparseo 



(4) At about the same time as the striped marlin^ the 

 little marlin / Kajikia formosan a/^ appears in the waters where 

 the short-nosed spearfish occur redo 



(5) The black marlines appearance follows the striped 

 marlino It begins to increase in numbers beginning around 

 Februaryo The period of its appearance is very long, and the 

 density of its occurrence apparently begins to decline from 



49 



