Bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) — spearfishing in Morocco

01 Telling it apart

A streamlined, thick-shouldered silver fish with a blue-green back, a large head, a big mouth full of visible, flat, razor-edged teeth, and a projecting lower jaw. Two dorsals: a short spiny one that folds into a groove, and a long soft one. The tail is forked, the pectoral base carries a dark blotch.

At distance it is a fast silver pack near the surface, moving with purpose, often with bait scattering ahead of it and birds above. The teeth and the heavy shoulders separate it from a leerfish or a bonito of the same size.

Juveniles run in dense schools along beaches and in estuaries in summer.

02 Habitat

Open coastal water, surf beaches, estuaries, harbour mouths and the water column over rock and sand. It follows bait and moves with it, so it is wherever the sardines, mullet and anchovy are: a beach one day, a point the next.

It hunts near the surface and in the first fifteen metres, in packs that drive bait against the shore or the surface.

Summer and autumn are its seasons on this coast; it moves offshore and south in winter.

03 Where to find it in Morocco

The whole Atlantic coast, from Tangier to Dakhla, and the Mediterranean in summer. The Atlantic beaches and river mouths from Rabat to Agadir see the big autumn runs; the south holds fish for longer.

Its biology is well studied in the Americas, Australia and the Mediterranean; not in Morocco. The figures here are a synthesis of those.

04 Spawning

Spring and summer, offshore, in the open water over the shelf. The young come inshore in summer and grow fast along beaches and in estuaries.

It matures at two years and grows fast, which is the only reason the species has survived the pressure on it: worldwide the stock is assessed as declining, and the IUCN lists it as Vulnerable.

05 Behaviour

A pack hunter, fast, aggressive and not particularly wary. A pack driving bait passes a diver at close range and often turns to inspect him. Movement and flash bring it in; a wounded fish brings the pack in harder.

It bites. On the shaft, in the boat, on the stringer: the teeth are sharp and the jaws snap by reflex long after the fish looks dead. Fingers near the mouth of a bluefish get cut.

Big fish are fewer, deeper, and outside the pack.

How you approach it

Ambush at midwater or just under the surface where bait is being driven: the pack comes through, and it comes through fast.
Movement brings it in. A flasher, a wobbled gun tip or a fin beat makes a pack turn.
Shoot the fish, not the pack: pick one, lead it slightly, aim behind the head. A shaft into the pack cuts through gills and lands nothing.
A 90 to 110 cm gun with a float. It is not a heavy fish, but a hit one runs and the pack follows it.
Grip it by the tail wrist or through the gill cover. Never the mouth. Dispatch it before it goes on a stringer.
Keep the catch off your body. A wounded bluefish on a waist stringer brings the pack, and the pack bites what is bleeding.

What people get wrong

01 That it is an inexhaustible fish because it turns up in numbers. It is listed Vulnerable worldwide; the numbers you see are one pack, not the stock.
02 That a dead bluefish is safe. The jaws snap by reflex for a long time after death.
03 That it is a leerfish. The leerfish has no visible teeth and a wavy lateral line; the bluefish has a mouth you can see the teeth in from a metre away.

Do not confuse it with

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

Leerfish, Lichia amia — deeper-bodied, a wavy dark lateral line, no visible teeth, and a sickle-shaped second dorsal.
Greater amberjack, Seriola dumerili — a dark diagonal band through the eye, a longer second dorsal and no teeth to speak of.
Atlantic bonito, Sarda sarda — oblique dark stripes on the back and a tuna build with finlets behind the dorsal.
Barracuda, Sphyraena viridensis — a much longer, thinner fish with a pointed snout and two widely separated dorsals.