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Striped Marlin - Kajikia audax
One of my sought after game fish, not to fish/hunt but to see and swim with them. More than just to swim with them but also to see them hunt among bait balls of Sardines. So this was a dream come true encounter to me even though I have seen them before. They are mostly between 1.5 - 2.5 meters.
We saw many of them on this trip, and our Boatman tries to locate them hunting among bait balls so that we can have better encounters with them and the experience was incredible. At times, the Baitballs (Sardines) were coming very close to us to 'take shelter' and we get the Marlins coming right to us that we have to back off as their sharp beak can surely inflict serious damages. As the Marlins hunt, they also flashes colours and also their dorsal fin. The dorsal fin are 'flattened' when they are swimming freely and not in hunting mode.
The striped marlin, ''Kajikia audax'', is a species of marlin found in tropical to temperate Indo-Pacific oceans not far from the surface. It is a desirable commercial and game fish with a record weight of 190 kg and a maximum length of 4.2 m . The striped marlin is a predator that hunts during the day in the top 100 metres or so of the water column, often near the surface. One of their chief prey is sardines.
comments (7)
They are truly a Magnificent animal and it is very hard to capture their beauty in a single picture and much more difficult to capture the experience of them hunting the Baitball especially with a compact camera. 4 Other guests on the trip had all the big camera set-ups and had great images. I took some videos and will upload them to You Tube later to share here :D Posted 7 years ago