Mackerel

The Black Sea mackerel is a small fish, up to 30 cm in length and 260 g in weight. The fish that live in the Mediterranean and Atlantic are much larger - up to 65 cm in length and over 3 kg in weight. Mackerel are part of a large family that also includes tuna and bonito. It is graceful, with a thin cylindrical body, multiple fins and a deeply incised tail. This makes it an excellent, fast and manoeuvrable swimmer. Her body is decorated with blue-green stripes on top and a shiny silver belly. And this is no coincidence - this is how the fish orient themselves in relation to each other in the numerous schools in which they live. If you look at one such school from the side, you'll see the amazing synchrony of the fish in it.

The mackerel inhabits the open sea and makes seasonal migrations - they spend the winter in the Sea of Marmara, where they breed, and in spring they enter the Black Sea to feed. They feed on zooplankton and small fish - anchovy, saurel, sprat. It is itself a food of sharks, tuna, dolphins and some birds.

Mackerel is a valuable species of fish that man has used for food since ancient times. Overfishing, pollution, shipping in the Bosphorus are the reasons why mackerel is now very rare in the Black Sea. It is included in the Red Data Book of Bulgaria as critically endangered.