Name That Fish

Let's name it Steve. Steve is a nice name.

Swordfish?

They sure do have distinctive eyes. How do they catch them there? Are all those people at a fish market in the second picture? Or fish plus some other event?

They catch Xiphias gladius and most other large pelagics with longlines. It seems that big fish weren't caught in this area (south of Guayaquil) until the 1980s, which is why they still have a fairly healthy fishery. Most of the people in this photograph are fishermen (at least 600 in this particular village and 300 boats). The fish are landed on this cement platform where they are eviscerated before they are whisked off to Japan. I was told to visit Santa Rosa by a biologist at the National Fisheries Insititute who also mentioned I would get to witness the problem of 'pollution by blood'. I didn't understand what he was talking about until I saw the amount of blood running off that platform and into their bay...