Mackerel

• It is a mainstay of the North Atlantic right whale's diet.
• It eats copepods and other zooplankton, supplemented with small fish, shrimp and squid.
• It has been protected in the European Union since 1996.
• It has no swim bladder, unlike the chub mackerel. That forces it to swim continuously so as not to sink, but lets it change depth very quickly without adjusting pressure.
• It also swims non-stop in order to breathe, because it ventilates its gills through its own forward motion.
• Its flesh is very oily and oxidises quickly after capture, which explains why it was traditionally salted or preserved in oil, and why it is among the fish with the most demanding cold chain.
• Its spawning grounds in the north-east Atlantic are shared among several national fleets, and disagreement over quotas has been a recurrent fishing dispute between the European Union, Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (fish)

Habitat & environment

Temperate pelagic waters of the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean included, from the surface down to 1,000 m

Birth weight

Pelagic larva after hatching from the egg

Size at birth

Pelagic larva at hatching

Sexual maturity

1-3 years (usual reference 1-2 years)

Litter / clutch size

40,000 to 190,000 eggs released in open water, with no parental care

Sources consulted: FishBase; PubMed; Fishipedia; Mass.gov Creature Feature; AnAge; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service