![]() ![]() Swordfish are undoubtedly fast swimmers, however, even if they have been overhyped. They can reportedly swim at more than 60 mph (100 kph), although that faces doubts similar to those raised for sailfish and marlin. ![]() ![]() Swordfish are famous for their namesake "sword," but they also share the billfish family's penchant for speed. Found in warm waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, swordfish are big, powerful swimmers and capable of incredible leaps. The third group of billfish is the swordfish, a single species and the sole member of its taxonomic family, Xiphiidae. NOAA Southeast Deep Coral Initiative and Pelagic Research Services ![]() Some experts consider those speeds unlikely, but nonetheless, marlins are famously fast and powerful swimmers, as immortalized by the blue marlin in Ernest Hemingway's " The Old Man and the Sea."Ī swordfish swims about 2,300 feet deep off the coast of Tampa, Florida. The BBC has reported, for example, that a black marlin stripped line from a reel at 120 feet per second, equating to about 80 mph (129 kph), while the ReefQuest Centre reports marlins can leap at 50 mph (80 kph). They are also strong leapers and fast swimmers, and at least one species, the black marlin, is sometimes cited as a contender for the fastest fish on Earth. Like sailfish, they are large predators - some measuring 16 feet (5 meters) long and weighing more than 1,400 pounds (635 kg) - with a long rostrum used for hunting. Some marlin species are threatened by overfishing, often becoming entangled in fishing gear meant for other species. Marlins are the most biodiverse of the billfish, with about 10 different species scattered around the planet, including the blue, black, striped, and white marlins. And they also achieve impressive speeds in another way: when a sailfish slashes its bill back and forth through a school of sardines, the tip can accelerate at 130 meters per second squared, according to a 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, which noted this is "one of the highest accelerations ever recorded in an aquatic vertebrate." Who needs to swim 68 miles per hour if you can do that?Ī white marlin leaps from the water off the coast of North Carolina. Nonetheless, sailfish are still among the ocean's fastest sprinters, not to mention skillful leapers. The results suggest sailfish can't exceed 10 to 15 meters per second (22 to 34 mph), and as the authors added, that's also roughly the speed at which cavitation should begin to damage their fins. A 2016 study published in Biology Open, for example, measured how quickly sailfish muscles could twitch in response to electrical stimulus, then used that to calculate their top speed. Recent research has also cast doubt on the reputed speed of sailfish. That's equivalent to 68 mph, but the sailfish was leaping as it fled, so that may not reflect its true swimming speed. During speed trials at Florida's Long Key, a hooked sailfish took out 100 yards (91 meters) of fishing line in 3 seconds, according to the ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research. National Ocean Service, but there's an asterisk. Sailfish have been clocked at 68 miles per hour (109 kph), according to the U.S. Billfish use their long bills not to spear their prey, but to slash and injure. Widely cited as the fastest fish in the ocean, the sailfish belongs to a group of big, swift predators known as billfish. Sailfish hunt sardines off the coast of Mexico. ![]()
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