Other Names
barracuda, oahu fish, ocean barracuda, Pacific kingfish, pride of Bermuda, queenfish, tigerfish; Arabic: kanaad znjebari; Creole: bécune grosse race, kin fis, thazard raité; French: paere; Hawaiian: ono; Japanese: kamasusawara; Portuguese: cavala gigante, cavala-da-India, cavala empinge; Spanish: guacho, peto, sierra; Tuvaluan: tepala.Identification
A long, slender, cigar-shaped mackerel with a sharply pointed head and a widely forked tail, the wahoo is a brilliant or dark blue color along its back. It has 25 to 30 bright or dusky blue vertical bands, or "tiger stripes", that extend down the bright silver to silvery gray sides and sometimes join into pairs below. |
| Wahoo (Acanthocybium solandri) |
A distinguishing feature is the movable upper jaw, which has 45 to 64 teeth, of which 32 to 50 are on the lower jaw; these teeth are large, strong, and laterally compressed. The gill structure resembles that of the marlin, but it lacks the characteristic gill rakers of the latter fish.
The lateral line is well defined and drops significantly at the middle of the first dorsal fin and extends in a wavy line back to the tail. The first dorsal fin is long and low and has 21 to 27 spines. It is separated from the second dorsal fin, which has 13 to 15 rays; the anal fin has 12 to 14 very small rays. There are a series of 9 dorsal finlets, both above and below the caudal peduncle.
