ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the species-specific swimming and movement patterns of tunas, billfishes, and large pelagic sharks derived from extensive data sets obtained using acoustic telemetry and electronic data-archiving tags. It discusses hydrostatic pressure and prey availability only briefly and delve further into temperature and dissolved oxygen. Rapid and repeated vertical movements and movements across thermal fronts are a common trait of pelagic fishes. Cranial endothermy is the most widespread form of regional endothermy among fishes and has been documented to occur in some divergent groups of pelagic fish. The blood of all tunas, billfishes, and sharks showing extensive vertical mobility is also subject to rapid open-system temperature changes during its passage through the gills. The net result is that although groups of large pelagic predators often occupy the same geographic areas of the open ocean, and which may be exploited by the same fisheries, they really occupy largely separate ecosystems.
