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
USS Skipjack (SSN-585) and appendage drag can be combined via algebra to show that the vessel should have reached 31 knots submerged. This speed was some 9 knots faster than the "Nautilus" made using the same basic reactor, and only 2 knots shy of the "Albacore"'s best theoretical submerged speed (33 kn). "Skipjack"'s maneuver capabilities, furthermore, added a whole different dimension to ASW problems as she could reverse direction in the distance of her own length, and were referred to as "flying", as "Skipjack" and her sister ships climbed, dove, and banked like an airplane. The antisubmarine warfare (ASW) problems created by such