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.
The genus. Trachinotus Lacepède 1801 - trachys (rough) + notus (back). ETYFish
The species. Trachinotus baillonii (Lacepède 1801) - manuscript name coined by Commerçon. ETYFish
- 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
