The taxonomy of fishes of the family Nemipteridae needs revision. There have been few studies on Nemipterid biology although there are numerous references to the group in reports on Asian fisheries : Isarankura (1970) collates our knowledge of A. hexodon and Li K-M. (1954, 1960) and Eggleston (1970) describe N. virgalus biology. The author spent the years 1964-68 in Hong Kong studying the fisheries biology of A. virgalus, N. bathyhus and N.japonicus, the three most important species of Nemiprerus in the fisheries of the northern part of the South China Sea. These species were found to have many similarities in general biology and the purpose of this paper is to outline these patterns in general. It is felt that such an outline may be useful to future workers on this valuable and interesting group of fishes.