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Fish

Atlantic horse mackerel

Trachurus trachurus

Trachurus trachurus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Carangidae WoRMS 126822

Reference photos

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A slender, silvery schooling fish with tall keeled scales along the side and a black spot on the trailing edge of the gill cover.

Depth

0-1050 m, usually 100-200 m

Size

Up to 70 cm total length, commonly about 22 cm

Habitat

Pelagic in coastal waters over continental shelves, schooling over sandy bottoms

Behaviour

Forms large schools in coastal areas; the west stock spawns from Biscay to Ireland in early spring, then migrates north and east to the northern North Sea

Diet

I eat

  • Fish, crustaceans and cephalopods
  • Planktonic crustaceans, especially copepods, euphausiids and mysid shrimps
  • Small schooling fish, including anchovy, blue whiting and silvery pout

Eats me

  • Larger predatory fish such as whiting, hake and John Dory
  • Sharks and rays, including spurdog and white skate
  • Marine mammals, including harbour porpoise and fur seals

Where you'd find it

Found all around Britain and Ireland, so you have a chance of seeing it anywhere on the coast.

ChannelCeltic SeaNorth SeaIrish SeaW of IrelandW of Scotland
Often seenWhere PEBL filmsBased on marine survey records (OBIS). Blank seas can mean nobody has looked there, not that the animal is absent.

Sources

Open-access references behind this page. Every statement on this page was read out of one of them; anything that could not be traced to a source was taken off the page rather than left standing. Each link was checked on the date shown, and confirmed then to be about this species.

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