Euthynnus affinis
marine fish, pelagic, Scombridae
Euthynnus affinis, the mackerel tuna, little tuna, eastern little tuna, wavyback skipjack tuna, kawakawa, or tongkol komo is a species of ray-finned bony fish in the family Scombridae, or mackerel family. It belongs to the tribe Thunnini, better known as the tunas. It is also in the genus Euthynnus of "little tunas," which includes the little tunny and the black skipjack.
Euthynnus affinis formerly was known as Euthynnus yaito.
Description
E. Affinis displays a typical tuna body shape with a slender, elongated body, and a deeply forked tail. It has a small amount of scales and 2 or more dark spots between the pelvic and pectoral fins. The first dorsal fin has 10-15 spines and is around 1/3rd of the tuna's body height. On its back, it displays 12 oblique stripes and a dark blue coloration for countershading. It can reach a maximum length of 1.1 metres (3.6 ft) and a weight up to 15 kilograms (33 lb).
To distinguish from the closely related black skipjack, also of the Pacific Ocean, the kawakawa has more broken stripes instead of straight stripes spanning the side of the body on the black skipjack.
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This entry incorporates text from “Euthynnus affinis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.