iStockphoto / FtLaudGirl
The mahi-mahi fish goes by many names. One that trips people up is ‘dolphin’ because its often confused with the mammal. They are also known as dorado depending on the part of the world.
In addition to being probably my favorite saltwater fish on earth, the mahi-mahi is the fastest growing fish in the ocean which interestingly translates to it also being one of the fastest travelers on earth. It isn’t the fastest fish in the ocean, that honor goes to the sailfish, but the dolphin fish lays claim to being the fastest grower and until a recent update from the Dolphinfish Research Program I had no idea just how far and fast these pelagic fish travel.
The Dolphinfish Research Program uses fish trackers to keep track of where these fish go and they work with fishing guides to log the data. On Monday, they shared data on the furthest a mahi-mahi had ever traveled in 24 hours and honestly, it’s about 50 miles further than I would have imagined.
How Far Mahi-Mahi Fish Travel In A Day
If that Facebook post isn’t showing up correctly, here is the map showing the single dorado’s 24-hour travel:
It’s 100% worth mentioning here that while the map shows a straight line that fish absolutely did not swim in a straight line. The journey was aided by the waters of the gulf stream but it is still unfathomable to me that a mahi-mahi could and would travel 119.15 miles in a single day.
Given that the Dolphinfish Research Program has extensive data on how far these fish travel, while this is the ‘furthest in 24 hours’ and an outlier, it’s also not unreasonable at all to think that this might be an outlier of the mahi-mahi’s capabilities. With better tracking, results might reveal these fish could travel even further in a 24 hour period.
As a pelagic fish, they are found all across the globe. The IGFA fishing world record for the dolphinfish or mahi-mahi is an 85 pound, 0oz fish caught in the Papagayo Gulf, Costa Rica by angler Manuel Salazar back in September 1976. There are countless other fishing records for this species as they are found everywhere and targeted by millions of anglers. Huge bull dolphin look wild compared to the cows:
For anyone just getting into fishing for mahi-mahi, here’s a tip I learned as a small kid. If you get into a school of them and hook one, reel it close to the boat and leave it hooked up. The school of fish will stay nearby and you can fill the fish box. As the fastest-growing fish in the ocean, they are far from threatened and classified under ‘least concern’ because they are quite literally everywhere if the water is warm.