Skipjack tuna important prey species for sharks and large pelagic fishes and is often used as live bait when fishing for Marlin. It has no scales, except on the lateral line and the corselet (a band of large, thick scales forming a circle around the body behind the head). It commonly reaches fork lengths up to and a weight of . Its maximum fork length is and maximum weight is . Ageing skipjack tuna is difficult, and the estimates of its potential lifespan range between 8 and 12 years. Skipjack tuna is a batch spawner. Spawning occurs year-round in equatorial waters, but
Skipjack (cipher) regarded with considerable suspicion by many for that reason. It was declassified on 24 June 1998, shortly after its basic design principle had been discovered independently by the public cryptography community. To ensure public confidence in the algorithm, several academic researchers from outside the government were called in to evaluate the algorithm (Brickell et al., 1993). The researchers found no problems with either the algorithm itself or the evaluation process. Moreover, their report gave some insight into the (classified) history and development of Skipjack: In March 2016, NIST published a draft of its cryptographic standard which no longer certifies Skipjack