The Atlantic horse mackerel, Trachurus trachurus is a species of mackerel in the family Carangidae. It gets its common name from the legend that other smaller species of fish could ride on the back of it over great distances. Other common names include common scad, maasbanker, scad, saurel, rough scad.
The Atlantic horse mackerel can be found in the north-eastern Atlantic from Iceland to Senegal, including the Cape Verde islands, and also in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
It congregates in large schools in coastal waters, where it feeds on crustaceans, squid, and other fishes. There are two main populations: the west stock which spawn in the eastern Atlantic off the coasts of western Europe, and the north stock which spawn in the North Sea.
This mackerel is edible and can be smoked, fried, salted and baked etc. It is an important commercial fish.
Read more about Atlantic Horse Mackerel: Ecology and Distribution
Famous quotes containing the words atlantic, horse and/or mackerel:
“Boys hide in lunging cubes
Crouching to explode,
Beyond the Atlantic skies,
With cheerful cries
Their barking tubes
Upon the German toad.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“And a man came out of the trees
And took our horse by the head
And reaching back to his ribs
Deliberately stabbed him dead.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Three miles long and two streets wide, the town curls around the bay ... a gaudy run with Mediterranean splashes of color, crowded steep-pitched roofs, fishing piers and fishing boats whose stench of mackerel and gasoline is as aphrodisiac to the sensuous nose as the clean bar-whisky smell of a nightclub where call girls congregate.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)