WHAT is your favourite animal? How many times have you heard that question from bored schoolchildren, presenters on Springwatch or pollsters with clip-boards on the High Street?

I am fascinated by most animals so my answer changes on a whim every time I'm asked. Recently it’s been one of our seasonal sea fish, the mackerel. Why? Oh, so many different reasons.

Nostalgia plays a part. Mackerel are a summer fish, only appearing off the Yorkshire coast from July through to September, so I associate them with those long, school summer holidays and family trips to the seaside.

Our North Sea mackerel population (genetically separate from the west coast Atlantic fish) spend the winter way offshore in deep water, preparing for their mass spawning in springtime.

With procreation done, the shoals moved in-shore a couple of months ago, triggered, it is thought, by sea temperature; when the surface layer of water reached 13C (back in late June) and you could expect excited whispers around the pubs and shops of Whitby and Scarborough: “Have you heard?...the mackerel are showing.”

It is food that attracts them into shallow water, and on to our radar, because mackerel are voracious predators with one of their favourite prey being sprats. Summer sprat shoals, just below the surface, flash silver in the sunlight as they feed on plankton, and this attracts the mackerel.

In the feeding frenzy that often results, the sea seems to boil with moving fish until the sprat shoal is depleted.

The smaller fish don’t stand much chance against the superior speed of their pursuers. Inside its staggeringly beautiful cobalt and turquoisestriped skin a fully-grown adult mackerel is a foot-and-a-half of pure muscle that can torpedo along at 40mph – about twice our running speed.

Cue my second reason for fan club membership. As a naturalist, I just can’t help admiring the mackerel as an extremely successful species, perfectly adapted to life as a fast marine predator.

They don’t have it all their own way, though – as is the nature of food chains, a small predator merely becomes prey for larger hunters, and Yorkshire’s grey seals probably welcomed the arrival of the mackerel as much as I did.

In recent weeks, I have also enjoyed the spectacle of gannets, on a foray from their colony at Bempton Cliffs, plunge-diving a few hundred yards out from Whitby Pier, with mackerel their probable quarry.

Top of the food chain in our vicinity is undoubtedly the porbeagle shark; a healthy breeding population of these up to nine feet long fish exists near Robin Hoods Bay, taking many mackerel and also the occasional surprised gannet.

My last, but not least, reason is a culinary one. I once overheard a woman in a restaurant state that she wouldn’t be having the mackerel as it was poor people’s fish. I was doubly appalled, first at her pompous snobbery, and second at her lack of good taste, because in my book mackerel is the most delicious delicacy available from the fishmonger’s slab. Better still this month, get hold of it before it even gets to the shops, freshly caught by one of the local boatmen or even your own rod and line from the end of Whitby Pier. My favourite recipe is the whole fish barbequed on the beach with lemon and crusty bread, but I also plan to try a friend’s suggestion of pan-fried in breadcrumbs or grilled with a cheese topping. Go on, be a discerning predator yourself and try the prince of fish.