A silver jack with a yellow line along the flank, schooling over temperate reef and around jetties.
To about 94 cm, though one source gives 120. Deep, oval and compressed with long scythe-like pectoral fins, greenish-blue above and silvery below, with a rather large diffuse black blotch on the upper edge of the gill cover. Juveniles and young adults show a yellow stripe along the middle of the side and faint yellow stripes along the dorsal and anal fin bases, which fade with age.
The structural character given for it is that the rear margin of the upper jaw is nearly vertical. It shares most of its Australian range with the sand trevally and no source consulted gives a checked separating character between the two.
Nought to two hundred and forty metres, schooling over reef and sand, in estuaries and around artificial structures. It makes offshore migrations. It is slow-growing and long-lived, usually over twenty years and recorded past forty-five, which matters because it is targeted by commercial and recreational fisheries throughout its range and has declined in New South Wales.
It was long confused with Pseudocaranx dentex. The Australian fish is P. georgianus, recognised as valid in 2006 and confirmed by genetic work.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.