Atlantic blue marlin
Makaira nigricans
— Where the name comes from
Makaira comes from the Greek mákhaira, the short curved sword of the infantry: the rostrum is not a spike but a blade the animal uses edge-on. Nigricans means “blackish”. Marlin comes instead from the English marlinspike, the sailors’ pointed tool for undoing rope.
— Facts
- Group
- Fish · Actinopterygii · Chondrichthyes
- Order
- Billfishes
- Habitat
- Tropical and subtropical open ocean, from the surface to 800 metres
- Range
- The tropical Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans
- Size
- 2.5–4 m, 200–600 kg; females up to 800 kg
- Diet
- Tuna, mackerel, squid
- Lifespan
- 20 years
— Characteristics
- 01
Females are far larger than males, by as much as fourfold.
- 02
It crosses oceans: tagged individuals have gone from the Caribbean to Africa.
- 03
It uses the bill edge-on inside shoals, not to spear.
— What sets it apart
It heats its eyes and brain. A modified eye muscle, which has lost the ability to contract and produces only heat, keeps the head as much as fifteen degrees warmer than the surrounding water: at that temperature the retina responds faster and the animal makes out movements that would escape it cold. It is the adaptation that lets it chase very fast prey down into cold deep water, and it shares it with only a few other fish — swordfish, tunas, some sharks.
