DolphinfishesCoryphaena

A mahi-mahi that hatches this spring can be a spawning adult before the year is out, and a five-year-old is an old one. Almost nothing else in the open sea assembles a body that fast. A larva a few millimeters long becomes a meter of muscle inside twelve months, and every part of the design, the single fin running from above the eye to the tail, the flattened flank, the deeply forked tail, exists to turn a constant stream of small fish into more mahi-mahi as quickly as possible.

That only works if the food never stops, and in open ocean, where there is nothing to hide behind, life collects under anything that floats. A drifting mat of weed, a plank, a lost crate, a length of net: within days it has small fish under it, and the mahi-mahi arrives for them. It is the most dependable rule in blue water. Find something floating and the fish are beneath it. Commercial fleets work exactly this reflex, seeding the ocean with drifting and anchored rafts and returning for whatever has gathered.

The colors are the first thing anyone mentions and the first thing anyone loses. Alive, the fish is blue-green over gold and it flickers and shifts while it hunts. Out of the water the whole display drains to a flat gray within minutes, so the fish on the plate is not the animal that was on the line.

One species is listed here, and it is fair to say a 🌊 Red Sea diver will not see it. This is an animal of open water, met from a boat over deep ground and around floating debris rather than on a reef, and the few that turn up near shore are passing through.