Greater amberjack (Seriola dumerili) — spearfishing in Morocco

01 Telling it apart

A big, streamlined, muscular fish, blue-grey above and silver below, with a faint amber stripe along the flank and a dark diagonal band running from the snout through the eye to the front of the dorsal. The tail is deeply forked and the tail wrist is slim and hard. The second dorsal is long and low.

At distance it is a grey torpedo with a fast, easy swim, usually in a group of three to twenty, appearing out of the blue at midwater and circling. The dark eye stripe and the sheer speed of direction change are the tells.

Juveniles are yellowish with five dark bars and live under floating objects.

02 Habitat

Open water over structure: walls, offshore pinnacles, seamounts and reef edges swept by current, and the water column above them. It is a coastal pelagic, passing along a coast and returning, rather than a resident of any one rock.

It follows bait: where sardines, mackerel or garfish are, the amberjacks are around them. Floating objects and moorings gather juveniles.

It is more often at midwater than at the bottom, and a diver looking down misses it.

03 Where to find it in Morocco

Exposed points and offshore shoals on both seaboards. The Atlantic south, from Agadir to Dakhla, holds large fish; the Mediterranean shoals around Al Hoceima and Cap des Trois Fourches see them in summer.

No Moroccan study has been published. The maturity and spawning figures here are Mediterranean.

04 Spawning

Late spring and summer: May to July in the Mediterranean, offshore over deep structure.

It matures late and large, at four to five years and around a metre. A big amberjack taken before summer is a fish that has not yet spawned that year.

05 Behaviour

It comes to you. Movement, flash and noise attract it: it circles a diver at midwater, closing in on each pass, and it is one of the few fish that gets bolder rather than warier with each turn.

It hunts in groups and moves fast. A wounded fish drives straight and hard, and a diver attached to one without a float is in trouble.

Big fish are more solitary and hold deeper, at the base of the structure or below the school.

How you approach it

Ambush in the water column above a pinnacle or a wall, at mid-depth, not on the bottom. It comes at midwater and a diver on the sand watches it pass overhead.
Movement brings it in: a flasher, a wobble of the gun, even a fin beat. Give it something to look at and let it circle.
A float and a strong line are not optional. A hit amberjack runs straight and hard; a diver holding the gun is dragged.
Shoot high, ahead of the gills, as it turns broadside. A shot from behind does not stop it.
A long gun, 110 to 130 cm, with a heavy shaft. The range is real and the fish is solid.
Big fish hold deeper and outside the school. If small ones circle, look below them.

What people get wrong

01 That it is a bottom fish. It lives in the water column and comes to a diver at midwater; lying on the sand is how you miss it.
02 That a school of small amberjacks means no big ones. The large fish are deeper and outside, and they come in last.
03 That any silver torpedo is an amberjack. Leerfish, bluefish and bonito share the water; the dark eye stripe and the forked tail settle it.

Do not confuse it with

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

Leerfish, Lichia amia — silver rather than grey, with a wavy dark lateral line and no eye stripe, and it hunts the surf rather than the blue.
Yellowtail amberjack, Seriola lalandi — a bright yellow tail and a sharper yellow flank stripe; rare here, mostly on the Atlantic south.
Bluefish, Pomatomus saltatrix — smaller, with a big toothed mouth and a shorter second dorsal, in fast packs near the surface.
Atlantic bonito, Sarda sarda — striped with oblique dark lines on the back and built like a small tuna.