Australia
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s
Robert Towns
Robert Towns was an Australian merchant, pastoralist, politician and civic leader. He was the founder of Queensland. After a career at sea as a master mariner based in Britain, Towns came to Australia in 1843 as the agent for London merchant Robert Brooks, he became a merchant in his own right in Sydney with involvement in the sandalwood and pelagic whaling trades. He was an importer of sugar and tea and exporter of wool, whale oil and other commodities, he became a pastoralist and pioneered the cultivation of cotton in Queensland. The head office of Robert Towns & Company was in Sydney with branch offices in Melbourne, Brisbane and Townsville, his far flung trading connections saw him do business with merchants in Mauritius, Ceylon, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, New Zealand, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides and Chile. Towns was born at Longhorsley, England, on 10 November 1794, he was educated at a village school and went to sea at an early age as an apprentice on a North Shields collier.
He was a mate by the age of 17, a master on a brig in the Mediterranean two years later. He made his first voyage to Australia as captain of Boa Vista in 1827, he was a regular trader to Australia by the time he arrived in command of the Brothers in August 1832. In 1838 he took command of Royal Saxon for London merchant and banker Robert Brooks. Towns was part-owner of the vessel. During the First Opium War he broke the British blockade of Canton and took aboard a cargo of tea "at the highest freight rates yet seen in British private trade." On his return to London he was asked to go to Australia to put in order the affairs of Brooks agent in Sydney, Ranulph Dacre. Towns reached Port Jackson in March 1843, took charge of the Sydney agency of Robert Brooks & Co, he was joined by his son the following year. He had strong ties in Sydney. Apart from annual voyages to the colony in the preceding fifteen years, on 28 December 1833 he had married Sophia Wentworth at St Philip's Church, Sydney. In 1843 he established Robert Co..
General Merchants and Commission Agents, at Sydney. An early investment was the purchase of the Elizabeth in 1843, she had been built in 1816 and the purchase of old vessels like her became a feature of his shipowning. In 1855 he took into the partnership Alexander Stuart. By 1857 the firm had made profits of £245,000. Much of this success relied on the ongoing business relationship with Robert Brooks. Brooks made available capital for joint ventures, made advances against Australian exports and provided general financial backing for Robert Towns & Co; the depressed colonial economy of the early 1840s, his ready access to credit, allowed Towns to become established as a leading figure in the shipping industry. He purchased eight vessels and a well-located wharf at Millar's Point, Darling Harbour, that soon became known as Towns' Wharf; the vessels were put to work in the sandalwood trade, as trading vessels. His standing in the Sydney commercial circles saw him invited the join the board of the Bank of New South Wales in 1850.
In the decade, he became president of the bank. Towns entry into the sandalwood trade began with a stroke of good fortune, his vessel Elizabeth returned to Sydney on 29 June 1845 from Tanna with 100 tons of sandalwood. It was sent to China where it arrived at a time of high prices of £50 a ton for a commodity the gathering of which by the natives at Eromanga had been paid for with old hoop-iron and assorted ironmongery. In the 1840s he began to establish trading posts on the islands to gather sandalwood, beche-de-mer and coconut oil for collection by his island trading vessels. Trading posts were established at Aneityum; the commodities collected there he sometimes shipped to China on his own vessels. On the return journey they would bring consignments of tea and sugar from ports in Asia; some of these cargoes during the gold rush years, were profitable. Towns had trouble finding men to work in his various enterprises, as did other employers in New South Wales. A Coolie Immigration Society was established in Sydney in September 1842 to lobby the government to remove restrictions on importing labourers from India.
The ship Orwell arrived in Sydney 23 March 1846 with 56 male and 13 female “coolies” recruited for Robert Towns in Calcutta to work as “domestic servants.” On the voyage out they had to work the pumps of the leaky ship night. They were given insufficient food and little warm clothing and all of them became unwell and one died soon after arrival. In Sydney the men were put to work on Towns wharf but they stopped work after a few days, they said their food was inadequate and the terms of their employment had never been made clear to them. Three hundred Chinese labourers were landed from Towns' ship Royal Saxon in 1853 to help meet the labour shortage caused by the Australian Gold Rushes but he found it difficult to place them with other employers. Towns was the leading figure in the trade and had brought in 2,400 Chinese by 1854 as well as 86 Indian workers, he tried to import Chinese and Indian labourers to work on his cotton plantation in Queensland but was frustrated by British government emigration agents in India and Hong Kong.
He looked to bring in indentured labourers from the Pacific Islands. The South Sea islanders who served as seamen on Towns' sandalwood vessels a
Midden
A midden is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, sherds and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human occupation. These features, provide a useful resource for archaeologists who wish to study the diet and habits of past societies. Middens with damp, anaerobic conditions can preserve organic remains in deposits as the debris of daily life are tossed on the pile; each individual toss will contribute a different mix of materials depending upon the activity associated with that particular toss. During the course of deposition sedimentary material is deposited as well. Different mechanisms, from wind and water to animal digs, create a matrix which can be analyzed to provide seasonal and climatic information. In some middens individual dumps of material can be analysed. A shell midden or shell mound is an archaeological feature consisting of mollusk shells; the Danish term køkkenmøddinger was first used by Japetus Steenstrup to describe shell heaps and continues to be used by some researchers.
A midden, by definition, contains the debris of human activity, should not be confused with wind or tide created beach mounds. Some shell middens are processing remains: areas where aquatic resources were processed directly after harvest and prior to use or storage in a distant location; some shell middens are directly associated as a designated village dump site. In other middens, the material is directly associated with a house in the village; each household would dump its garbage directly outside the house. In all cases, shell middens are complex and difficult to excavate and exactly; the fact that they contain a detailed record of what food was eaten or processed and many fragments of stone tools and household goods makes them invaluable objects of archaeological study. Shells have a high calcium carbonate content; this slows the normal rate of decay caused by soil acidity, leaving a high proportion of organic material available for archaeologists to find. Edward Sylvester Morse conducted one of the first archaeological excavations of shellmounds in Omori, Japan in 1877, which led to the discovery of a style of pottery described as "cord-marked", translated as "Jōmon", which came to be used to refer to the early period of Japanese history when this style of pottery was produced.
Shell middens were studied in Denmark in the latter half of the 19th century. The Danish word køkkenmødding is now used internationally; the English word "midden" derives from the same Old Norse word. Shell middens are found in lakeshore zones all over the world. Consisting of mollusc shells, they are interpreted as being the waste products of meals eaten by nomadic groups or hunting parties; some are small examples relating to meals had by a handful of individuals, others are many metres in length and width and represent centuries of shell deposition. In Brazil, they are known as sambaquis, having been created over a long period between the 6th millennium BC and the beginning of European colonisation. European shell middens are found along the Atlantic seaboard and in Denmark and date to the 5th millennium BC, containing the remains of the earliest Neolithisation process. Younger shell middens are found in Latvia, the Netherlands and Schleswig Holstein. All these are examples where communities practiced hunting/gathering economy.
On Canada's west coast, there are shell middens that run for more than a kilometer along the coast and are several meters deep. The midden in Namu, British Columbia is over 9 meters deep and spans over 10,000 years of continuous occupation. Shell middens created in coastal regions of Australia by indigenous Australians exist in Australia today. Middens provide evidence of prior occupation and are protected from mining and other developments. One must exercise caution in deciding whether one is examining a beach mound. There are good examples on the Freycinet Peninsula in Tasmania where wave action is combining charcoal from forest fire debris with a mix of shells into masses that storms deposit above high-water mark. Shell mounds near Weipa in far north Queensland that are less than 2 meters high and a few tens of meters long are claimed to be middens, but are in fact shell cheniers re-worked by nest mound-building birds. Shell mounds are credited with the creation of tropical hardwood hammocks, one example being the Otter mound preserve in Florida, where shell deposits from Calusa natives provided flood free high areas in otherwise large watered areas.
There are instances in which shell middens may have doubled as areas of ceremonial construction or ritual significance. The Woodland period Crystal River site provides an example of this phenomenon; some shell mounds, known as shell rings, are open arcs with a clear central area. Many are known from Japan and the southeastern United States, at least one from South America; the word is of Scandinavian via Middle English derivation.
Queensland
Queensland is the second-largest and third-most populous state in the Commonwealth of Australia. Situated in the north-east of the country, it is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Pacific Ocean. To its north is the Torres Strait, with Papua New Guinea located less than 200 km across it from the mainland; the state is the world's sixth-largest sub-national entity, with an area of 1,852,642 square kilometres. As of 15 May 2018, Queensland has a population of 5,000,000, concentrated along the coast and in the state's South East; the capital and largest city in the state is Australia's third-largest city. Referred to as the "Sunshine State", Queensland is home to 10 of Australia's 30 largest cities and is the nation's third-largest economy. Tourism in the state, fuelled by its warm tropical climate, is a major industry. Queensland was first inhabited by Torres Strait Islanders.
The first European to land in Queensland was Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606, who explored the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula near present-day Weipa. In 1770, Lieutenant James Cook claimed the east coast of Australia for the Kingdom of Great Britain; the colony of New South Wales was founded in 1788 by Governor Arthur Phillip at Sydney. Queensland was explored in subsequent decades until the establishment of a penal colony at Brisbane in 1824 by John Oxley. Penal transportation ceased in 1839 and free settlement was allowed from 1842; the state was named in honour of Queen Victoria, who on 6 June 1859 signed Letters Patent separating the colony from New South Wales. Queensland Day is celebrated annually statewide on 6 June. Queensland was one of the six colonies which became the founding states of Australia with federation on 1 January 1901; the history of Queensland spans thousands of years, encompassing both a lengthy indigenous presence, as well as the eventful times of post-European settlement.
The north-eastern Australian region was explored by Dutch and French navigators before being encountered by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770. The state has witnessed frontier warfare between European settlers and Indigenous inhabitants, as well as the exploitation of cheap Kanaka labour sourced from the South Pacific through a form of forced recruitment known at the time as "blackbirding"; the Australian Labor Party has its origin as a formal organisation in Queensland and the town of Barcaldine is the symbolic birthplace of the party. June 2009 marked the 150th anniversary of its creation as a separate colony from New South Wales. A rare record of early settler life in north Queensland can be seen in a set of ten photographic glass plates taken in the 1860s by Richard Daintree, in the collection of the National Museum of Australia; the Aboriginal occupation of Queensland is thought to predate 50,000 BC via boat or land bridge across Torres Strait, became divided into over 90 different language groups.
During the last ice age Queensland's landscape became more arid and desolate, making food and other supplies scarce. This led to the world's first seed-grinding technology. Warming again made the land hospitable, which brought high rainfall along the eastern coast, stimulating the growth of the state's tropical rainforests. In February 1606, Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon landed near the site of what is now Weipa, on the western shore of Cape York; this was the first recorded landing of a European in Australia, it marked the first reported contact between European and Aboriginal Australian people. The region was explored by French and Spanish explorers prior to the arrival of Lieutenant James Cook in 1770. Cook claimed the east coast under instruction from King George III of the United Kingdom on 22 August 1770 at Possession Island, naming Eastern Australia, including Queensland,'New South Wales'; the Aboriginal population declined after a smallpox epidemic during the late 18th century. In 1823, John Oxley, a British explorer, sailed north from what is now Sydney to scout possible penal colony sites in Gladstone and Moreton Bay.
At Moreton Bay, he found the Brisbane River. He established a settlement at what is now Redcliffe; the settlement known as Edenglassie, was transferred to the current location of the Brisbane city centre. Edmund Lockyer discovered outcrops of coal along the banks of the upper Brisbane River in 1825. In 1839 transportation of convicts was ceased, culminating in the closure of the Brisbane penal settlement. In 1842 free settlement was permitted. In 1847, the Port of Maryborough was opened as a wool port; the first free immigrant ship to arrive in Moreton Bay was the Artemisia, in 1848. In 1857, Queensland's first lighthouse was built at Cape Moreton. A war, sometimes called a "war of extermination", erupted between Aborigines and settlers in colonial Queensland; the Frontier War was notable for being the most bloody in Australia due to Queensland's larger pre-contact indigenous population when compared to the other Australian colonies. About 1,500 European settlers and their alli
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Giant trevally
The giant trevally known as the lowly trevally, barrier trevally, giant kingfish or ulua, is a species of large marine fish classified in the jack family, Carangidae. The giant trevally is distributed throughout the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific region, with a range stretching from South Africa in the west to Hawaii in the east, including Japan in the north and Australia in the south. Two were documented in the eastern tropical Pacific in the 2010s, but it remains to be seen if the species will become established there; the giant trevally is distinguished by its steep head profile, strong tail scutes, a variety of other more detailed anatomical features. It is a silvery colour with occasional dark spots, but males may be black once they mature, it is the largest fish in the genus Caranx, growing to a maximum known size of 170 cm and a weight of 80 kg. The giant trevally inhabits a wide range of marine environments, from estuaries, shallow bays and lagoons as a juvenile to deeper reefs, offshore atolls and large embayments as an adult.
Juveniles of the species are known to live in waters of low salinity such as coastal lakes and upper reaches of rivers, tend to prefer turbid waters. The giant trevally is an apex predator in most of its habitats, is known to hunt individually and in schools; the species predominantly takes various fish as prey, although crustaceans and molluscs make up a considerable part of their diets in some regions. The giant trevally employs novel hunting strategies, including shadowing monk seals to pick off escaping prey, as well as using sharks to ambush prey. Footage released in 2017 on Blue Planet II revealed that a group of 50 giant trevally hunt terns fledgings still learning to fly and which crashland in the water as well as both fledglings and adults unfortunate enough to fly low enough for the fish to pounce on them, in Farquhar Atoll in the Seychelles; the giant trevally reproduces with peaks differing by region. Spawning occurs at specific stages of the lunar cycle, when large schools congregate to spawn over reefs and bays, with reproductive behaviour observed in the wild.
The fish grows fast, reaching sexual maturity at a length of around 60 cm at three years of age. The giant trevally is both an important species to commercial fisheries and a recognised gamefish, with the species taken by nets and lines by professionals and by bait and lures by anglers. Catch statistics in the Asian region show hauls of 4,000–10,000 tonnes, while around 10,000 lbs of the species is taken in Hawaii each year; the species is considered poor to excellent table fare by different authors, although ciguatera poisoning is common from eating the fish. Dwindling numbers around the main Hawaiian Islands have led to several proposals to reduce the catch of fish in this region; the giant trevally is classified within the genus Caranx, one of a number of groups known as the jacks or trevallies. Caranx itself is part of the larger jack and horse mackerel family Carangidae, a group of percoid fishes in the order Perciformes; the giant trevally was first scientifically described by the Swedish naturalist Peter Forsskål in 1775 based on specimens taken from the Red Sea off both Yemen and Saudi Arabia, with one of these designated to be the holotype.
He named the species Scomber ignobilis, with the specific epithet Latin for "unknown", "obscure" or "ignoble". It was assigned to the mackerel genus Scomber, where many carangids were placed before they were classified as a separate family; this revision in classification saw the species moved to the genus Caranx, where it has remained. After its initial description, the giant trevally were confused with the Atlantic crevalle jack, Caranx hippos, due to their superficial similarity, which led to some authors claiming the crevalle jack had a circumtropical distribution. After Forsskål's initial description and naming, the species was independently renamed three times as Caranx lessonii, Caranx ekala and Carangus hippoides, all of which are now considered invalid junior synonyms; the latter of these names once again highlighted the similarity with the crevalle jack, with the epithet hippoides meaning "like Carangus hippos", the crevalle jack's Latin name at that time. Despite the resemblance with the crevalle jack, the two species have never been phylogenetically compared, either morphologically or genetically, to determine their relationship.
C. ignobilis is most referred to as the giant trevally due to its large maximum size, with this abbreviated to GT by many anglers. Other names used include lowly trevally, barrier trevally, yellowfin jack, Forsskål's Indo-Pacific jack fish and Goyan fish. In Hawaii, the species is exclusively referred to as ulua in conjunction with the prefixes black, white, or giant. Due to its wide distribution, many other names for the species in different languages are used; the giant trevally is the largest member of the genus Caranx, the fifth-largest member of the family Carangidae, with a recorded maximum length of 170 cm and a weight of 80 kg. Specimens this size are rare, with the species only seen at lengths greater than 80 cm, it appears. Elsewhere in the world, only three individuals over 100 lbs have been reported to the IGFA; the giant trevally is similar in shape to a number of other large jacks and trevallies, hav
Mahi-mahi
The mahi-mahi or common dolphinfish is a surface-dwelling ray-finned fish found in off-shore temperate and subtropical waters worldwide. Called dorado and dolphin, it is one of two members of the family Coryphaenidae, the other being the pompano dolphinfish; the name mahi-mahi comes from the Hawaiian language and means "very strong", through the process of reduplication. Though the species is referred to as the common dolphinfish, the use of "dolphin" can be misleading as they are not related to dolphins. In parts of the Pacific and along the English-speaking coast of South Africa, the mahi-mahi is referred to by its name in Spanish, dorado. In the Mediterranean island of Malta, the mahi-mahi is referred to as the lampuka. Linnaeus named the genus, derived from the Greek word, κορυφή, meaning top or apex, in 1758. Synonyms for the species include Coryphaena argyrurus, Coryphaena chrysurus, Coryphaena dolfyn. Mahi-mahi have compressed bodies and a single long-based dorsal fin extending from the head to the tail.
Mature males have prominent foreheads protruding well above the body proper. Females have a rounded head, their caudal fins and anal fins are concave. They are distinguished by dazzling colors - golden on the sides, bright blues and greens on the sides and back; the pectoral fins of the mahi-mahi are iridescent blue. The flank is golden. Out of the water, the fish change color, going through several hues before fading to a muted yellow-grey upon death. Mahi-mahi can live up to five years, although they exceed four. Females are smaller than males. Catches are 7 to 13 kg and a meter in length, they exceed 15 kg, mahi-mahi over 18 kg are exceptional. Mahi-mahi are among the fastest-growing of fish, they spawn in warm ocean currents throughout much of the year, their young are found in rafts of Sargassum weeds. Mahi-mahi are carnivorous, feeding on flying fish, squid and other forage fish, they have been known to eat zooplankton. Males and females are sexually mature in their first year by 4–5 months old.
Spawning can occur at body lengths of 20 cm. Females may spawn two to three times per year, produce between 80,000 and 1,000,000 eggs per event. In waters at 28 °C/83 °F, mahi-mahi larvae are found year-round, with greater numbers detected in spring and fall. Mahi-mahi fish are found in the surface water, their flesh is similar to sardines. The body is slender and long, making them fast swimmers. Mahi-mahi are sought for sport fishing and commercial purposes. Sport fishermen seek them due to their beauty, food quality, healthy population. Mahi-mahi can be found in the Caribbean Sea, on the west coast of North and South America, the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast of Florida and West Africa, South China Sea and Southeast Asia, Hawaii and many other places worldwide. Fishing charters most look for floating debris and frigatebirds near the edge of the reef in about 120 feet of water. Mahi-mahi swim near debris such as floating wood, five-gallon bucket lids, palm trees and fronds, or sargasso weed lines and around fish buoys.
Frigatebirds search for food accompanying the debris or sargasso. Experienced fishing guides can tell what species are around the debris by the birds' behavior. Thirty- to 50-pound gear is more than adequate when trolling for mahi-mahi. Fly-casters may seek frigatebirds to find big mahi-mahis, use a bait-and-switch technique. Ballyhoo or a net full of live sardines tossed into the water can excite the mahi-mahis into a feeding frenzy. Hookless teaser lures can have the same effect. After tossing the teasers or live chum, fishermen throw the fly to the feeding mahi-mahi. Once on a line, mahi-mahi are fast and acrobatic, with beautiful blue, yellow and red dots of color; the United States and the Caribbean countries are the primary consumers of this fish, but many European countries are increasing their consumption every year. It is a popular eating fish in Australia caught and sold as a byproduct by tuna and swordfish commercial fishing operators. Japan and Hawaii are significant consumers; the Arabian Sea the coast of Oman has mahi-mahi.
At first, mahi-mahi were bycatch in the tuna and swordfish longline fishery. Now, they are sought by commercial fishermen on their own merits. In French Polynesia, fishermen use harpoons, using a designed boat, the poti marara, to pursue it, because mahi-mahi do not dive; the poti marara is a powerful motorized V-shaped boat, optimized for high agility and speed, driven with a stick so the pilot can hold his harpoon with his right hand. The method is practiced by fishermen in the Philippines in the northern province of Batanes, where the harpooning is called pagmamamataw. Depending on how it is caught, mahi-mahi is classed differently by various sustainability rating systems: The Monterey Bay Aquarium classifies mahi-mahi, when caught in the US Atlantic, as a best choice, the top of its three environmental-impact categories; the aquarium advises to avoid imported mahi-mahi harvested by long line, but rates troll and pole-and-line caught as a good alternative. The Natural Resources Defense Council classifies mahi-mahi as a "moderate mercury" fish, suggests eating six servings or fewer per month.
The Environmental Defense Fund classif
