Every other jack on this page hunts fish. This one eats plankton.
The diet is shrimps, copepods and the larvae of decapods, with small fish only as a supplement, and the English name is a direct record of it - the shrimp scad. That single difference explains the rest of the animal: it is small for the family at 40 cm (16 in), it works inshore reef in large schools rather than patrolling a drop-off alone, and it has none of the heavy jaw and steep forehead its relatives carry.
What identifies it is the tail and the shoulder: the caudal fin is yellow against an otherwise silvery, side-flattened body, and a dark spot sits on the gill cover.
Forsskal described it from this coast in 1775, on the Danish expedition he did not survive - the fourth fish in this catalogue whose scientific record starts on this shore.
It has also been traveling. The species went north through the Suez Canal (🇪🇬 Egypt), settled in the eastern Mediterranean, and has now been recorded as far west as Malta, which puts it in the same company as the pufferfishes that made the same trip.
The genus. Alepes Swainson 1839 - a- (without) + lepis (scale). ETYFish
The species. Alepes djedaba (Forsskål 1775) - Arabic name for this fish. ETYFish
- yellow tail fin on an otherwise silvery, compressed body
- dark spot on the gill cover
- in large schools close to inshore reef, not out over the drop-off
- up to 40 cm
