Common dolphinfish

A long, muscular, laterally flattened fish with a single dorsal fin running from just behind the head all the way to a deeply forked tail. Alive in the water it is electric: brilliant green-gold along the flanks, deep blue over the back, a scatter of small dark blue spots, and yellow in the fins. The colours pulse and shift while the fish is excited and fade to dull grey within minutes of death, which is why a lampuka on a market slab looks nothing like one in the sea. Adult males grow a blunt, almost vertical forehead; females keep a rounded profile. Maltese fish are usually 40 to 80 cm; the species can exceed two metres elsewhere.

It is an open-water fish, fast and always on the move, and divers see it rarely and briefly, usually as a gold flash near the surface off a headland or around floating debris in late summer. It hunts flying fish, small shoaling fish and squid, and it has a strong habit of gathering under anything floating that casts shade.

That habit is the foundation of Malta's most famous fishery. From 15 August to the end of December, boats work kannizzati, rafts of palm fronds anchored offshore, and net the lampuki that collect beneath them. The season is licensed and the technique is old enough to have Roman claims attached to it. Torta tal-lampuki, the pie of lampuki with spinach, olives, capers and tomato, is the dish of the Maltese autumn, and the arrival of the first catch is genuine local news.