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California Sardine
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This excellent food-fish reaches a length of a foot, and occurs on our Pacific Coast from Puget Sound southward to Magdalena Bay. It is abundant on the California coast, and spawns in the open sea. It resembles the European sardine, but has no teeth, and the belly is less strongly serrate.
Head 4; depth 5; D. 14; A. 17; scales 53; scutes 18+14; vertebrae about 50. Body slender, subfusiform, the back rather broad; ventral serratures very weak; maxillary reaching nearly to middle of eye; mandible little projecting, the tip included; no teeth in mouth; gillrakers longer than the eye, very slender and numerous, close-set, some 50 or 60 on lower limb of arch; a frill of enlarged scales with dendritic striae about nape and shoulder; insertion of dorsal considerably nearer snout than base of caudal. Colour, dark bluish above, silvery below; a series of round black spots running backward from level of eye, bounding the dark clour of the back; similar smaller spots above, forming lines along the rows of scales; these spots sometimes obscure or wanting, especially in old examples; tip of lower jaw yellow; lower part of dorsal yellowish; peritoneum black; flesh darker and more oily than that of the herring.