Atlantic bonito (Sarda sarda) — spearfishing in Morocco

01 Telling it apart

A small tuna: a compact, muscular, spindle-shaped fish with a steel-blue back crossed by five to eleven dark oblique stripes running forward and down, a silver belly, a pointed head with a big mouth of small teeth, and a row of finlets between the dorsal and the tail. The tail is a stiff crescent on a slim keeled wrist. The first dorsal is long and straight-edged.

At distance it is a tight, fast school of dark-backed fish near the surface, often boiling on bait with birds above. The oblique stripes on the back are the tell, visible from above as the school passes.

It never stops swimming.

02 Habitat

Open coastal water: the water column off points and beaches, the outside of bays, the blue beyond a reef. It follows sardine and anchovy and it is where they are, usually near the surface, usually moving.

It comes within reach of a shore diver on points that face open water and along the edge of a current.

It is seasonal: the schools pass in spring and again in autumn, and in winter it is offshore and deep.

03 Where to find it in Morocco

Both seaboards, in season. The Mediterranean points from Cap des Trois Fourches to Tangier see the spring run; the Atlantic from Tangier to Essaouira the autumn one. The south holds fish for longer.

Its biology is well studied in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The maturity figure is Mediterranean.

04 Spawning

Late spring and summer, from May to July in the Mediterranean, in open water. It matures at one to two years and lives only five or six, so the stock turns over fast and the fish you meet are young.

The spring run on this coast is largely pre-spawning fish moving to the spawning ground.

05 Behaviour

Fast, schooling and curious in passing. A school comes through a point at speed, turns on a diver at midwater once, and is gone; it does not circle like an amberjack. Flash interests it.

It is not wary of a still diver, but it is never still itself. The encounter is a pass, and the shot is a lead.

A hit bonito runs hard and fast in the open, and it dies quickly on the shaft.

How you approach it

Ambush at midwater off a point facing open water, at the depth the school is passing. It comes through once; be still and loaded when it does.
Lead the fish: it is moving fast and the shaft is slow. Aim ahead of the gill plate as it crosses.
A 100 to 110 cm gun with a float. It is not heavy, but a hit fish runs into the blue.
A flasher brings a school in for one pass. Use it before the school arrives, not as it passes.
Bleed and ice it at once. The flesh spoils faster than any other fish on this coast.

What people get wrong

01 That it is a small tuna worth little. It is one of the finest eating fish on the coast when bled and iced at once, and worthless after an hour in the sun.
02 That it is a mackerel. The stripes on the back run obliquely forward and the body is a tuna’s; the mackerel is barred vertically and far slimmer.
03 That it will circle back. It passes once and keeps going.

Do not confuse it with

The species this one is taken for, and what tells them apart.

Little tunny, Euthynnus alletteratus — wavy dark markings on the rear of the back only and a few dark spots below the pectoral; a heavier fish.
Atlantic mackerel, Scomber scombrus — much smaller and slimmer, with vertical wavy bars, in the same schools of bait.
Bluefish, Pomatomus saltatrix — no stripes, no finlets, and a mouth full of visible flat teeth.