Nearly two meters (6 ft) of muscle with a dark bar through the eye, appearing beside a wreck at the edge of visibility and usually coming back for a second pass. The bar is a mood indicator: it flares dark when the fish is hunting or excited and fades when it is not.
It hunts by running things down in open water, taking small schooling fish, squid and anything driven up against a structure. Wrecks and offshore pinnacles gather them for exactly that reason - a wreck is a place where prey has nowhere to go.
One detail sets this species apart, and it is not flattering. Amberjacks carry a famously heavy parasite load: nematodes in the flesh, flukes on the gills and skin, and a monogenean that specializes in them. It is the reason fishermen call the big ones wormy, the reason the species is a headache in aquaculture, and, indirectly, one of the reasons those cruising fish keep visiting cleaning stations.
They spawn in open water in warm months and grow fast. Large ones from some regions have caused ciguatera poisoning; on the reef there is nothing here to be careful about beyond how quickly the fish loses interest.
- long torpedo body, amber-brown stripe from snout through the eye to the dorsal fin
- dark diagonal band across the eye, brighter when the fish is excited
- small tail base with a deeply forked tail
- cruises past in ones and twos, then turns and comes back for a second look
- length up to 190 cm
