Ellis - Swordfish : a biography of the ocean gladiator

Richard Ellis lives in New York and is the author of more than twenty books on marine life, including Great White Shark, Men and Whales, Monsters of the Sea, The Encyclopedia of the Sea, Deep Atlantic, The Search for the Giant Squid, The Empty Ocean, Tuna: A Love Story, The Great Sperm Whale, and Shark: A Visual History. A renowned painter of marine natural history, his paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world and have appeared in such publications as Skin Diver, Audubon, National Wildlife, National Geographic, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, as well as his own books.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2013 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2013.

Printed in the United States of America

22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92290-4 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92292-8 (e-book)

ISBN-10: 0-226-92290-1 (cloth)

ISBN-10: 0-226-92292-8 (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ellis, Richard, 1938

Swordfish : a biography of the ocean gladiator / Richard Ellis.

pages ; cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-226-92290-4 (cloth : alkaline paper) ISBN 978-0-226-92292-8 (e-book) 1. Swordfish. 2. SwordfishEvolution. I. Title.

QL638.X5E45 2013

597'.78dc23

2012034166

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.481992 (Permanence of Paper).

. The eye of the swordfish. Photograph by Carl Safina.

RICHARD ELLIS

Swordfish

A Biography of the Ocean Gladiator

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Chicago & London

Contents

Preface

This is a single-species book, along the lines of Great White Shark, The Search for the Giant Squid, Tuna: A Love Story, The Changing World of the Polar Bear, and The Great Sperm Whale.

The shark book and the squid book had as their subjects marine creatures that threatened humans, either in fact or fantasy, and were thus perceived as having more popular appeal, than, say, a perch or a parrotfish. The worldwide population of bluefin tuna is threatened by overfishing, mostly to feed the insatiable Japanese sashimi market, and Love Story was written to draw attention the plight of the great and wonderful tuna. The story of the polar bears relationship with humans is probably the most complex of all: we fear and love the great white bear, hunt it for sport, display it in zoos and circuses, and nominate it as the living symbol for global warming. And of course, the sperm whales history is the most convoluted and contentious of all: the protagonist in Americas greatest novel, as well as the protagonist in one of Americas most important industries. I now bring you the broadbill swordfish, a creature that can hold its own against almost anyone and anything, including ships, boats, sharks, submarines, divers, and whales, but has not fared so well against the most effective predator the world has ever known, especially when he deploys those merciless engines of destruction known as longlines.

Among the authors who discuss big-game fishing, the billfishes usually have pride of place, butuntil nowonly the sailfish has its own book, Jim Bob Tinsleys Swashbuckler of the Open Seas. There are any number of books about salmon, and quite a few about the striped bass because it is the favorite of surf-casting fishermen and also the subject of one of the few successful conservation efforts in recent times. There are books about tuna, eels, herring, bluefish, and many of the lesser lights of the piscine fraternity. Although the swordfish has been the object of directed fisheries for centuries and hasat least according to some biologistsbeen close to extinction, I am delighted to conclude this introduction with an announcement that, as far as we know, Xiphias gladius has more or less successfully withstood centuries of harpooning, fishing, driftnetting, and longlining and has emerged bloody but unbowed. With help from members of the very species that threatened it, the worlds swordfish populations are on the rise, and we may see Xiphias gladius resume its rightful position as one of the oceans dominant predators, in character as well as numbers.

Like the tuna book, this, too, is a love story. How do we love the swordfish? As one of the most spectacularly beautiful animals on earth; as one of the largest and fastest, as well as the most heavily armed of all fishes; as the consummate pelagic predator, hunting just as efficiently in the chop of surface waters as in the unlit silences of the depths; as one of the ocean realms most powerful hunters, fearing nothing from shark to man; as an attacker of animate and inanimate objects that would threaten its supremacy; as the sine qua non of big game fishesthe fighter against which all others are measured; as an animal that has steadfastly refused to reveal many of its deepwater secrets; as one of the worlds favorite seafood items; as the object of some of the worlds most intensive commercial fisheries... and as one of the large fish species that has been fished so heavily that its continued existence was once in question.

The swordfish is an apex predator, a fish that sits atop the food chain, preying on various creatures lower in the hierarchy. (The mako shark is also a rival of the swordfish and might even be considered its superior, as there are many more records of makos attacking swordfish than vice versa.) The reader will notice another large predator in this books dramatis animalae, one that seems also to occupy an apex position but somehow finds itself one step below Xiphias gladius. The other apex predator is Dosidicus gigas, the jumbo or Humboldt squid. Swordfish, at a thousand pounds or more, are larger than these squid, which rarely reach two hundred pounds, but Dosidicus is considered one of the fastest, smartest, and most powerful of all cephalopods and might occasionally turn the tables. The stomach contents of swordfish have been extensively analyzed, but swordfish pieces in the stomachs of squid could only be identified by DNA analysis, and this has not been attempted very often.

I also encountered the vast body of lore and literature about Dosidicus, a squid that is as intriguing as its larger cousin, Architeuthis; probably more dangerous, and a whole lot better known. After all, the first ever photographs of a living Architeuthis were taken off Japan in 2004 and published in 2005, but Dosidicus has been known to Mexican and Peruvian fishermen for a long time and was photographed as long ago as 1940, in a National Geographic article about big-game fishing in the Humboldt Current. And while nobody fishes for Architeuthis (it reeks of ammonia and is inedible to humans), Dosidicus is the target of a major fishery in the Gulf of California. When I found myself researching Dosidicus gigas as a preferred prey item of Xiphias gladius, I realized that it was not only this interaction that was fascinating, it was also the two species, individually and together. Brad Seibel, a teuthologist (squid specialist) at the University of Rhode Island, suggested that a book about