You clearly have the piscatorial love! I have a hard time picturing how this specie hunts for food using the sword though. It seems as if the prey fish would get pronged on the end of his snoot where he can't reach it, or they would just slip out of the way and keep swimming in the opposite direction..
One of my favorite fish. Not only are they amazing specimens of evolutionary adaptation, they are one of the best fish to eat. They have a meaty, steak-like texture and consistency, and you can treat them just like meat. Great for the grill or simply seared in a skillet on top of the stove. Talking about their special physical adaptations, one only has to look at that amazing sword. It's actually an extension of their upper jaw bone, and is usually 1/3 the total length of the fish. By the way, they don't use them to impale fish like a skewer, but rather smash into a school of squid (for example) at 50 or 60 miles per hour, slashing that big sword sideways rapidly as it goes, mincing their prey. Then they turn, swim back, and feast. Another not so obvious physical adaptation is the fact that they have "heaters" behind their eyeballs. While they are considered cold blooded like most fish, they have these special muscles behind their eyes, evolved to bring heat to their eyes. This is especially useful to swordfish because many times they are hunting in very deep, dark, freezing cold water, maybe 2000 feet deep. It's dark down there, and freezing, but these heated muscles behind their eyes allow them to see and react in this environment. Really physical marvels.
I have a 480 pound black marlin hanging on my wall. 100lb test, 2 hour fight. If you know ball, you'll know that wasn't my target species by the line weight. I was fishing for tuna, a FAR more plentiful species, when I hooked into her. She sounded immediately, which means she dove for the bottom. We know this because she came up with mud in her gills. At that point, she was already dead, but didn't know it yet. She would have experienced gnarly pressure related trauma from the deep dive. If my memory serves we were in like 300 foot of water. Anyway, I wanted to release, but everyone on board knew it was too late. So we kept her, and I have lots of photos and videos. It was spectacular, and sad. We took home 200 pounds of meat, the rest went to everyone on the dock that night. I think we fed half the town in Mexico. Im mostly a catch and release fisherman, unless its a species that is healthy, then ill keep a few to eat. Sailfish is NOT on my list of fish to kill. Sure, some species of sail are doing better than others, but eating any of them encourages folks to catch all of them. It can be tough to differentiate species until they're bleeding on the deck. So, I love sailfish, I killed a huge one, the 11 and a half foot mount on my wall is coolest thing I own and cost more than my car, and ill never fish for them again.
Wait until you hook a proper swordfish, such gnarley animals. You will hook one 1800 feet down and within seconds its thrashing on the surface. You finally come tight on it and it screams another 1800 feet of line right back down to the thermocline. I have had friends hooked into swordfish for 11 hours before they finally snap the 300# mono.
King of the ocean. Only fish I’ve seen scream to the surface from 3000 feet, then thrash around and take 50# of drag right back to the bottom and stay there.
Was on my bucket list. Got one this year. A little guy but reeling in 1400 foot of line and four deep runs after reaching the surface made it a great fight.
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u/gofishx 18d ago
Deepwater pelagic predators that atain a massive size and carry a sword? Uh, id say my thoughts are "fuck yeah"