Sardinella aurita

Common Name

Spanish Sardine

Year Described

Valenciennes, 1847

Identification

Dorsal Fin: 17-19
Anal Fin: 16-20
Pectoral Fin: 15-16
Pelvic Fin: 8 branched
Vertebrae: 45-47
Lateral Line Scales: 41-46
Ventral Scutes: 32-34
Gill Rakers: >80

Body elongate and slender. Cross-section almost cylindrical. Head relatively small. A number of frontoparietal striae on top of head. Mouth small, barely extending to orbit. Upper jaw not notched. Hypomaxilla absent (compare Harengula where it is present). Teeth absent. Rear of gill cover with two fleshy lobes. Gill rakers very numerous and increase with age. Lower anterior gill rakers on second and third arch almost flat (compare brasiliensis). Dorsal fin centered at midbody with a concave margin. Anal fin small with origin well behind last dorsal ray. Pelvic fin under dorsal fin, with a slightly rounded posterior margin. Pectoral fin inserted low on body. Tail forked. Body fully scaled. Ventral scutes present but keels absent.

Color

Bright silvery with a gray, dusky, or blue back. A yellowish lateral stripe often present on side. Fins yellowish to dusky, especially tail.

Size

Maximum size 30cm SL, but common >20cm SL.

Habitat

Coastal, inshore and offshore pelagic in fully saline water. Forms huge schools.

Range

Cape Cod to at least the northern part of South America, including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. See notes regarding taxonomy.

References

McEachran, J.D. & J.D. Fechhelm. 1998. Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico. Volume 1: Myxiniformes to Gasterosteiformes. University of Texas Press, Austin. i-viii + 1-1112.

Munroe, T.A. & M.S. Nizinski. 2002. Clupeidaeidae (pp 804-830). In: Carpenter. 2002. The living marine resources of the Western Central Atlantic. Vol. 2: Bony fishes part 1 (Acipenseridae-Grammatidae). FAO Species Identification Guides for Fisheries Purposes. American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists Special Publication No. 5.

Stern, N., Douek, J., Goren, M. and B. Rinkevich. 2017. With no gap to mind: a shallow genealogy within the world’s most widespread small pelagic fish. Ecography v. 41 (no. 3): [1-13] 491-504.

Other Notes

According to a recent phylogeny by Stern at al. (2017),the genetic differentiation between 5 studied Sardinella spp. was extremely shallow, indicating sub-specifies levels of divergence between 3 Atlantic and 2 Indo-Pacific Sardinella spp. Given the unreliable separation of Sardinella aurita and S. brasiliensis, it is likely there is just one species. However, the study does not include NW Atlantic material and the phylogeny shows a clade corresponding to eastern Atlantic S. aurita and a clade of SW Atlantic fish that would correspond to S. brasiliensis (described from Brazil). It is not known if NW Atlantic material corresponds to the European or the Brazilian clade, so the identity of that population is unknown. If all of the material is one species, the name Sardinella aurita would be used for the same widespread fish that occurs nearly worldwide. I keep the name S. brasiliensis for only SW Atlantic material and assign S. aurita to the rest of the Atlantic range.