A meter and a half of silver muscle with both jaws drawn out into a toothed beak, lying at the surface. It is the largest needlefish in the sea, and everything about it is aimed forward.
It hunts by charging along the surface at small fish, and it can leave the water entirely to do it, skittering on the lower lobe of the tail before dropping back. That habit is fine until something gets in the way.
This is the fish that injures and occasionally kills people. Startled at night by a light or a boat, a needlefish accelerates in a straight line at the surface, and a hard beak on a one-meter fish moving at speed goes through soft tissue - fishermen and night divers around the tropics have been impaled through the chest, the neck and the eye. The rule is simple: keep torch beams pointed down at the surface at night, and do not stand up in a small boat waving one around.
By day the same animal is a shy silhouette hanging above the reef. It spawns by attaching eggs with fine sticky filaments to floating weed, which is why juveniles turn up in drifting rafts far from any coast.
The genus. Tylosurus Cocco 1833 - tylos (callus) + oura (tail). ETYFish
The species. Tylosurus crocodilus (Péron & Lesueur 1821) - like a crocodile. ETYFish
- long thin silver body with both jaws drawn out into a beak full of teeth
- dark blue-green back, keel on the tail stalk
- swims right at the surface, often as a shadow above a diver
- length up to 1.5 m
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
