ISTIOPHORIDAE

Makaira nigricans Lacepéde, 1802, is known from the tropical and temperate waters of all the Atlantic excluding the Mediterranean (Nakamura 1985, 1986). However its presence as occasional transient in the Mediterranean is supposed on the basis of recorded sizes of two large billfishes (not preserved) captured at Gallipoli, Ionian Sea (Bini, 1968) and Scilla, Strait of Messina (Costa, 1991), respectively.