Pacific Bonefish

Interesting Info

• The Pacific Bonefish is found across the Indo-Pacific region, including northern Australia (Western Australia, Northern Territory, and Queensland).
• Its name comes from its bony skeleton, which makes it less desirable as food but a prized challenge for sport anglers.
• The body is torpedo-shaped with a pointed snout and large forked tail, built for speed in shallow tropical flats. The colour is bright silver with faint horizontal streaks, helping it blend into sandy seabeds.
• Bonefish prefer shallow sandy flats, seagrass beds, and coastal lagoons, often moving with the tides.
• They are powerful swimmers, capable of sudden bursts of speed that make them one of the hardest-fighting fish pound for pound.
• Their diet includes shrimp, crabs, molluscs, and small fish, which they root from the sand using their downturned mouths.
• Bonefish often feed in shallow water so skinny that their tails stick out, a behaviour anglers call “tailing.”
• Breeding occurs offshore, where adults form large spawning aggregations at night, releasing eggs into open water.
• The larvae are unusual, like eels, they pass through a transparent leptocephalus stage that drifts with ocean currents before transforming into juveniles..
• Indigenous communities in northern Australia have caught them traditionally for food, though they are not a major food species today.
• The lifespan is typically 10–15 years, with some living longer in lightly fished populations.