White marlin: Abundance of a look-alike species clouds population status of a million dollar fish
Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 10:07
in Biology & Nature
The prized white marlin is among the most overexploited open-ocean fish. It's the subject of intense international recovery efforts. A new study now shows that a look-alike species, the roundscale spearfish, makes up a relatively high proportion of the fish identified as "white marlin". As such, current biological information on white marlin is likely contaminated by a second species, and past white marlin population size assessments are now uncertain.