At 2:30 p.m. on July 6, 1967, the Alvin deep submersible was surveying the ocean floor off the coast of Florida at a depth of about 610 meters, and at this time it was targeting a coral of interest, a group of three people from Marvin McCamis, Valentine Wilson and Edward Zarudzki, one piloting the deep submersible and one observing the coral.
Suddenly Edward Zarudzki exclaimed, a big fish outside the porthole on the right side quickly rushed over and slammed into the shell of the submersible, "Duang" sounded, startling everyone, when Zaruzki saw it, the "big fish" seemed to be stuck on the shell of the deep submersible, and was constantly struggling, and soon some blood and broken flesh were still floating away, Zarudzki knew that the fish had been seriously injured because of desperate struggle.
After communicating with the water surface, the trio decided to float urgently, because they did not know whether the deep submersible would be damaged by the impact, they could only float up for inspection, and when they reached the surface of the water, they really frightened everyone, and the jumping 2.5 meters long and weighing about 90 kilograms of swordfish was stuck in the gap between the upper and lower parts of the submarine's fiberglass hull.
The sailfish was still struggling after the water, but it was unlucky, with nearly 90 kilograms of fish meat feeding all the crew of the mothership, and a large amount of fish meat frozen in the freezer!
Swordfish is a famous delicious fish in the ocean, is a good material for sashimi, fish soup and fish balls, many fishing enthusiasts especially like to fish for sailfish, but what you don't know is that this delicious fish is a well-known ocean overlord, even killer whales have to retreat.
No one knows about swordfish! Because the image of this fish has a high probability of appearing as a villain or a villain in cartoons and cartoons, it is very easy to distinguish them:
The body is extremely streamlined
The dorsal fin is high and the ventral fin is about the same height as the dorsal fin
The head has a long spike, almost 1/3 of the body length
In fact, if you look for this feature, there are several kinds of fish that are very similar to this, such as the two kinds of fish in the picture below, who can still distinguish who is a swordfish and who is a sailfish?
Swordfish are very similar to swordfish, but the dorsal fin of the swordfish is very high, really like a flag, and the body is more slender, and the swordfish has a somewhat spindle-shaped body, and the ventral fin of the two is also somewhat different, and the tail fin is similar. The weight difference between the two is also relatively large, the swordfish is relatively small, the body length is rarely more than 3 meters, the maximum weight is about 90 kg, but the swordfish is obviously much larger, the body length can reach 3-5 meters, the maximum weight can reach 650 kg.
Despite the huge difference in size, both are extremely speedy swimmers in the ocean, and sailfish have perfect body shape, and marine biologists have tested the speed of sailfish, swimming 91.44 meters in 3 seconds, about 110 kilometers per hour.
The swordfish is also not to be underestimated, its spindle-shaped body shape, and the long spikes on the head, the resistance under the water is very low, and the speed can also exceed 100 km / h, both of which are one of the fastest fish in the ocean.
But the "birth" of these two speed kings is very small, the number of eggs laid by swordfish is very high, the number of female swordfish lays more than millions of eggs at a time, and the number of eggs laid by sailfish is also very high, but these are not important, because both hatch only the size of shrimp!
What the sailfish look like when they first hatched
The sailfish are only 3-4 mm when they first hatch, and one finger can kill many of them, while the swordfish are also very small when they first hatch!
Just like a small shrimp, seaweed shrimp skin soup can eat dozens or even hundreds of pieces, but the growth rate of the two is amazing, such as swordfish can grow to 90 cm in the first year, which is one of the fastest growing fish in the world! In the juvenile stage, they eat everything, from plankton to small fish and shrimp, and even their own kind, eating everything they can eat.
However, the number of swordfish and swordfish spawning at a time is very large, which is originally such a survival strategy, you do not have to worry about the future of swordfish and swordfish, the number is also its strategy to deal with natural enemies, and compared with the harmless fish such as sunfish, swordfish and swordfish are not the same, as long as they are adult, then they will become veritable ocean overlords.
The swordfish and the swordfish are not very temperamental, very fierce, the dorsal fin of the sailfish is usually folded, but it will unfold when attacking, it looks like a flag, and the swordfish often attacks large fish with its beak, so even the sperm whale is not afraid, and the killer whale that often harasses the blue whale and the humpback whale does not want to provoke the swordfish, because they are too strong, not only the speed is high, and this poke can directly pierce the internal organs of the killer whale, Because a 5-meter-long swordfish has a pointed beak of more than 1.5 meters, this needle may have severely damaged the killer whale.
The high speed of the sailfish also rampages in the sea, given its speed and long spikes, no one dares to mess with it, that is, I don't know if the swordfish and the sailfish will look at each other unfavorably and fight, and guess who will win?
Do the spikes of swordfish and sailfish blunt?
The spikes of swordfish and sailfish are the protruding maxilla (also known as the beak bone) and are used to hit and catch prey, but the question arises, will these spikes break due to poor use, or wear out over time?
On October 20, 2014, a paper by Ron Shahar, a biologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was published in PNAS, the national academy of sciences, in which he began to believe that the beak bones of swordfish do not have the same mechanisms for repairing bones as mammals, and that swordfish bones have long been shown to have such functions.
The ultrastructure of mammalian bones, compared to relatively "featureless" fish bones, show morphological evidence of remodeling
But Shahar persuaded Dr. Maria Laura Habegger, whose students often fished in southern Florida, and provided Shahar with a lot of swordfish beak bones for study, and found that many of the beak bones showed signs of repair, which meant that the swordfish's beak bones were repairive, so they could be gradually repaired even if worn.
Evidence of swordfish reshaping tissue
Of course, the beak bone strength of the swordfish is also very high, according to Shahar's test data, its strength is about the same as the horse bone, and its yield stress deformation is 1.5 to 2 times that of the mammalian bone, which makes the swordfish bone very difficult to break.
Both sailfish and swordfish are a great threat to humans
On January 12, 2016, 39-year-old Liena, her husband and friends, were snorkeling at Tanjong Karang Beach in Donggala, Sulawesi province, central Indonesia, when they were severely damaged by a sailfish attack and died despite being sent to the hospital in time.
In 2004, a malaysian adult man was attacked by a sailfish while fishing, when a high-speed swimming sailfish jumped up from the water and directly inserted it into his chest, and the man died on the spot, the death was very tragic, directly pierced by the swordfish spikes.
In 2015, Randy Llanes, a 47-year-old fisherman in Hawaii, was killed by a sailfish attack, also through the chest.
Swordfish attacks hurt people are not a few, and swordfish also like to jump out of the water, their attacks can even pose a danger to the ship, the general sailing ship if the 500 kg of swordfish chased and pierced, it is estimated that the ship will sink, and in the London Museum is said to have preserved a piece of wood that was pierced by the swordfish attack, up to 50 cm thick, but there are also claims that this case is untrue.
Two erroneous, oft-cited examples of "swordfish" piercing wooden boats
Further reading: There is also a kind of needlefish
The size of the needlefish is obviously much smaller than that of swordfish and swordfish, the spottail needlefish , the body is long and flattened, the body length is about 200 to 450 mm, the other is the black-backed round-jawed needlefish (Tylosurus melanotus), which is also long cylindrical, slightly flattened, with a length of about 0.6 meters to 1 meter.
But both swim very fast, reaching a speed of about 60 kilometers per hour, and there is a very deadly habit of trying to hit the light at night, which leads to many fatal attacks from fishermen with needlefish. In October 2010, a 45-year-old female kayaker enthusiast near Florida's Big Pine Bay was attacked by needlefish, and on the evening of October 4, 2013, a Saudi man was shot through the neck by a needlefish while swimming in the waters near Dammam, causing massive bleeding and death.
These sea creatures are truly terrifying, attacking humans like missiles!