Argentine

• Its silvery scales, highly reflective and easily shed, are what give the genus its name: argentina means silvery in Latin.
• Its outsized eyes make use of the residual light reaching two hundred metres down, where the human eye would make out nothing at all.
• It is taken as trawl bycatch and much of it goes for fishmeal.
• Its name comes from its sheen: argentina alludes to the intense silvery reflection of its flanks, produced by guanine crystals beneath the skin.
• That silveriness is camouflage in twilight waters: it reflects the ambient light and erases the fish's silhouette when seen side-on.
• It has very large eyes in proportion to its body, adapted to the dim light of the depths at which it lives.
• It feeds on zooplankton, above all copepods and euphausiids, and forms schools near the bottom during the day.
• It is taken as bycatch in deep-water trawling and goes mostly to fishmeal.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bony fish)

Habitat and environment

Sandy and muddy bottoms of the shelf and slope, between 50 and 700 m

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Argentina sphyraena