A long, narrow, fast mackerel with vertical bars, usually seen alone and only for a moment.
To about 250 cm. Extremely elongate and only slightly compressed, oval in cross section. The snout is about half the length of the head and sharply pointed, which is the whole silhouette. Iridescent blue-green above with twenty-four to thirty irregular cobalt-blue vertical bars running below the lateral line, and a long low first dorsal fin.
The Pacific sierra has round orange spots rather than bars, and a snout shorter than the rest of its head.
Sources disagree sharply on depth, one giving the top twelve metres and another to a hundred and eighty. It is an oceanic fish found offshore and around islands, usually alone or in loose groups rather than compact schools, taking fish and squid.
Ciguatera is reported.
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.