A tuna the size of a forearm, 65 cm (26 in), hunting in packs that boil the surface for a minute and are gone. Small enough to be prey for everything larger and fast enough that most of it fails.
The scales are the field mark. A frigate tuna is naked except for a corselet of scales over the shoulder, which then narrows into a thin strip running back along the flank. Its near-twin, the bullet tuna, has the same corselet without the strip - and that is the difference, on two fish that are otherwise identical at a glance.
It eats small fish, squid and crustaceans, and it is itself the staple of nearly everything bigger. Where you see a pack of these working the surface, expect larger predators underneath and birds above; a frigate tuna school is a signal rather than a sight.
For divers it is an edge-of-visibility fish, a burst of silver against the blue over a drop-off. For fisheries across the 🌊 Indian Ocean it is a major catch in its own right and the bait that catches everything else.
- small tuna with a wide gap between the two dorsal fins
- band of scales over the shoulder ending in a narrow strip along the flank
- dark oblique wavy markings on the back, above a scaleless silver side
- hunts in fast churning packs at the surface
- length up to 65 cm
