---
title: Marlins (Istiophoridae)
scientific_name: Istiophoridae
common_name: Marlins
rank: Family
published: 2024-11-24T08:57:37.597Z
updated: 2026-08-23T21:43:03.727Z
tags: Marlins, Istiophoridae, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/marlins
---

# Marlins (*Istiophoridae*)

## Quick facts

- **Rank:** Family
- **Scientific name:** Istiophoridae
- **Body shape:** Torpedo - Streamlined and muscular, built for open-water speed - jacks, tunas, barracudas.
- **Species listed here:** 1

## How to recognise this group

- streamlined torpedo-shaped body
- long, rigid, spear-like snout or bill
- prominent dorsal fin
- deeply forked tail fin
- dark blue to black back, silvery-white belly

The bill is not a spear, and it is not used point first. High-speed footage of sailfish working a ball of sardines shows the bill swung sideways through the school like a bat, tapping several fish on every pass, and the ones that come out of it stunned or damaged are the ones collected afterward. Skewering happens, but mostly by accident.

The surface is the point. The bill is bone grown forward out of the upper jaw, and it is not smooth: it carries small tooth-like denticles, so a pass through a packed school abrades as much as it strikes. It is also not essential equipment. Billfish that have snapped theirs off turn up fat and healthy, which says the bill improves a hunt rather than making one possible.

Sailfish do this in company, and the company is orderly. Several fish work one bait ball with only one or two attacking at a time while the rest hold station, and they trade places. Between passes the flanks light up in vertical bars that appear and vanish within a second, and the fish making the attack is usually the brightest one there, which appears to keep the others clear of a swinging bill. A heater behind the eye keeps eye and brain above the temperature of the water.

The other thing worth saying is what nobody knows. Sailfish are quoted everywhere as the fastest fish in the sea on the strength of one old estimate taken off a fishing reel, and the measurements made since have come nowhere near it. There is no reliable figure.

One member of the family reaches this sea, the Indo-Pacific sailfish, and it is an open-water animal. It is not a reef encounter. It is seen from boats offshore, in blue water, and by the people who fish for it.


## Species (1)

- [Indo-Pacific Sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/marlins/indo-pacific-sailfish)

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/marlins)*
*Updated: August 23, 2026*