Southern Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus maccoyii and Barracouta, Thyrsites atun

Plate 44, Figure 1. The Barracouta, Thersites atun (now known as the Barracouta, Thyrsites atun) found in coastal Victoria?

Plate 44, Figure 2. The Tunny, Thynnus thynnus (now known as the Southern Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus maccoyii) found in Hobson's Bay

Barracouta

There can be no doubt of the identity of our Australian Barracouta and that so abundant at the Cape of Good Hope; and Dr. Richardson's supposed T. altivelis must, I fancy, be founded on some mistake. The stomach usually contains many small fishes of its own and other species.

The Barracouta is a tolerably good fish for the table, and is abundant in the waters round the coast in all the colder months of the year.

Tunny

On account perhaps of the beef-like redness of the flesh, it is not prized as food, and the fisherman here, as at home, note the greater heat of the body than in other fish, due to this condition of the muscles from the abundance of oxygenated blood.

It reaches 10 or even 20 feet in length in Europe and America but our individuals are rarely more than 4 feet long, and must be all young; Belon's account of one reaching 32 feet in length has not been paralleled in modern times, and is perhaps erroneous.

Of the above 5 specimens, the smallest, or figured one, was caught in Hobson's Bay, the largest at Portland, the next in size in Bass' Straits, the next at Queenscliff.