---
title: Smallspotted Dart (Trachinotus baillonii)
scientific_name: Trachinotus baillonii
common_name: Smallspotted Dart
taxon: Jacks, Amberjacks, Pompanos
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-12T11:31:13.100Z
updated: 2026-09-10T22:28:16.947Z
tags: Smallspotted Dart, Trachinotus baillonii, Jacks, Amberjacks, Pompanos, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/jacks-amberjacks-pompanos/smallspotted-dart
---

# Smallspotted Dart (*Trachinotus baillonii*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Jacks, Amberjacks, Pompanos (*Carangidae*)
- **Size:** up to 60 cm
- **Weight:** up to 1.5 kg
- **Depth:** 0-3 m
- **Diet:** Piscivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** The surf line at the edge of lagoon and seaward reef, in the top few meters
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- row of small dark spots along the lateral line, more of them in older fish
- dark edges to the sickle-shaped fins
- steep blunt snout on a deep silver body
- in the broken water at the reef edge, in pairs or small groups
- up to 60 cm

This fish hunts in the surf. Not near it - in it, in the broken water where the swell hits the reef edge, from the surface down to about three meters, which is the shallowest working depth of any hunter in this catalogue.

That is a place almost nothing else uses. Visibility in the wash is close to nothing, the water moves in every direction at once, and a fish that cannot hold position there is thrown onto the reef. What it buys is small fish that have gone into the shallows precisely because nothing follows them, and this dart follows them.

The body is built for it: deep, strongly compressed, with sickle-shaped fins and a steep blunt snout, so the fish holds its line in moving water and turns inside its own length. It reaches 60 cm (24 in) and about 1.5 kg.

Identify it by the lateral line. A row of small dark spots runs along it, and older fish carry more of them than young ones - a mark that grows in rather than fades. The fins are edged in dark.

It travels in pairs or small groups at the surface, and it is one of the few large fish here a snorkeler in waist-deep water is more likely to meet than a diver.

## Also known as

- **English:** smallspotted dart, Small Spotted Dart, Baillon's Dart
- **French:** Pompaneau muscadin
- **Spanish:** Pámpano Abotonado
- **Japanese:** コバンアジ, Koban-aji

## Scientific synonyms

- *Caesiomorus baillonii* Lacepède, 1801
- *Caesiomorus quadripunctatus* Rüppell, 1829
- *Trachinotus bailloni* (Lacepède, 1801)
- *Trachinotus cuvieri* Wakiya, 1924
- *Trachinotus jordani* Wakiya, 1924
- *Trachinotus oblongus* Cuvier, 1832
- *Trachinotus quadripunctatus* (Rüppell, 1829)
- *Trachynotus bailloni* (Lacepède, 1801)
- *Trachynotus baillonii* (Lacepède, 1801)
- *Trachynotus cuvieri* Wakiya, 1924
- *Trachynotus jordani* Wakiya, 1924
- *Trachynotus oblongus* (Cuvier, 1832)

## Range

Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/jacks-amberjacks-pompanos/smallspotted-dart)*
*Updated: September 10, 2026*