A fast open-water amberjack that comes in over reef and around structure to hunt, in ones and twos or in a school.
To about 250 cm. Elongate and fusiform with similar upper and lower profiles and a long pointed snout, dark blue to greenish-blue above and silvery-white below with a clean line between them. A narrow bronze stripe runs along the middle of the side and turns yellow towards the rear, the tail is yellow, and a yellow stripe runs from the snout through the eye.
The almaco jack is the confusion and the second dorsal fin settles it: a tall scythe-shaped lobe and a dark band from snout to dorsal origin there, a low lobe and the bronze-to-yellow side stripe here.
Nought to about fifty metres normally, recorded far deeper, around deep reefs and rocky outcrops, and it prefers water of 18 to 24 degrees. Young fish form schools of several hundred; adults are in small groups near rock and reef. It eats small fish, squid and crustaceans.
One flag on this entry. Seriola lalandi has been split, with S. dorsalis now treated as the northeast Pacific fish and S. aureovittata as the northwest Pacific one, leaving S. lalandi as the southern hemisphere species. The Australian records here are safely S. lalandi. The Revillagigedo record is not: the eastern Pacific fish is most likely S. dorsalis, and no source consulted records either name from Revillagigedo specifically. That record needs checking.
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.