Comber (fish)

Comber ( Serranus cabrilla )

The comber ( Serranus cabrilla ) is a medium sized marine fish of the family Serranidae the ( Serranidae ). He lives in the Mediterranean, in the western Black Sea and the eastern Atlantic from the coasts of the British Isles to South Africa, and in the Azores, Madeira and in the Canary Islands. Deposits in the Red Sea are unsure.

Features

The seabass can be a maximum of 40 inches long, but usually remains at a length of 25 centimeters. His body is spindle- shaped and elongated. The basic color is light, dark or reddish brown. In caves or other shaded areas live specimens are more reddish, animals that reside in sunny locations rather more brownish. On the flanks, he has seven to nine transverse bands, which is of a white or yellow longitudinal band extending from head to tail, interrupted. Its dorsal fin is supported by ten hard jets and 13 to 15 soft rays, the anal fin of three hard and 7-8 soft rays.

Way of life

The seabass is territorial forming and spatial fidelity. He lives at depths of 5 to 500 meters on the shelf in reefs, seagrass beds and muddy or sandy sea bottoms and feeds on prey on small fish, cephalopods and crustaceans. Like all groupers of the genus Serranus he is a Simultanhermaphrodit ( hermaphrodite ), so it has the same functional male and female gonads. Whether a self-fertilization is possible is unknown. In the Mediterranean, fishes from April to July, the population in the North Atlantic spawn a little later.