Yellowfin Bream

Description:

My 2nd "fish" spotting, and I was blessed to see thousands of them - it was quite a spectacle. A local species of sea bream (I'm fairly certain is yellowfin) was swimming in a small group (3rd photo), and within minutes, thousands of fish came swimming up along the marina wall from further upstream. The last photo of the marina shows the exact area I observed them from. I watched them for a good 5 minutes and they just kept coming. They were swimming with a gentle ebb tide, and directly towards the mid-afternoon sun. Is that what fish do? A keen angler out there may be able to confirm this ID, and I would be grateful because I'm not really a "fish" guy, except at dinner. See notes.

Habitat:

Cowan Creek is a saltwater tributary of the Hawkesbury River and Broken Bay, on the northern outskirts of Sydney. Empire Marina at Bobbin Head lies within steep terrain that is heavily wooded, in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. Native vegetation runs right down to the rocky shores along the entirety of creek. Cowan Creek is very deep and tidal, and apart from leaf litter and debris from surrounding bushland, is very clean. The species occurs in coastal and estuarine waters. Here's some park info - https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/thi...

Notes:

I have kept these photos au-naturel, so what you see is what I saw. Two ID candidates I started with that are common in these waters were the yellowfin bream (Acanthopagrus australis) and black bream (Acanthopagrus butcheri). However, the photo and video in the Australian Museum reference link helped me commit to an actual species ID. True colour is difficult to determine other than they looked silver, but colour can be variable: fish caught in freshwater may be bronze- or brown-coloured, while those caught in estuarine or marine habitats are more silvery. However, the first thing I noticed was the forked tail with the dark edge, and the pointed pectoral fins (5th photo). The larger fish would have been upwards of 40-50 cms long, possibly more. Other bream species include - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowfi...