A slim silver schooling fish to 30 cm (12 in) with a yellow tail, a dark spot on the gill cover and, along the rear of the dorsal and anal fins, rays partly split off into what look like small finlets - the feature that separates it from the other scads.
The eyes have windows. A transparent fatty membrane grows over each eye from front and back, leaving only a vertical slit across the pupil. This adipose eyelid is a streamlining device: it smooths the head profile of a fish that spends its life at speed, at the cost of the peripheral vision the covered parts would have given. Several fast schooling families evolved it independently.
Schools work the water column over reef edges and in bays, taking small crustaceans and fish, and they move constantly - a school here at dusk is somewhere else at dawn.
It is a food fish across its range and appears in local markets. The white flesh and the modest size make it a staple rather than a prize, which is why the species is under steady, unremarkable pressure everywhere it occurs.
The species. Atule mate (Cuvier 1833) - from mate-paré. ETYFish
- slim silver fish with a yellow tail and a dark spot on the gill cover
- a clear fatty membrane covering most of the eye, leaving a slit over the pupil
- last dorsal and anal rays partly separated, like small finlets
- length up to 30 cm
