Lavezzi's Groupers

Oasi Marina delle Isole Lavezzi - Cernia Bruna - Dusky Grouper - Marco Ciolli
Oasi Marina delle Isole Lavezzi – Cernia Bruna – Dusky Grouper – Marco Ciolli

Le Cernie di Lavezzi Groupers of Lavezzi Corsica Serranidae.
In August of 1994, starting from Castiglioncello (Li), I went to Cruise in Sardinia with some divers friends. Corsica had recently set up the Oasis Marina of the Lavezzi Islands. It seemed so appropriate to make a nice dive to meet groupers that during the summer there went up from the bottom to give rise to their mating rituals. Recall that the Brown Grouper is a fish belonging to the family Serranidae, hermaphrodite proterogino who lives long, some estimate over 50 years, and become male around 12 years. Therefore all specimens of great size are male.

Oasi Marina delle Isole Lavezzi - Cernia Bruna - Dusky Grouper - Marco Ciolli
Oasi Marina delle Isole Lavezzi – Cernia Bruna – Dusky Grouper – Marco Ciolli

 

The images you see were recorded in rvm (we are in fact in 1994), and therefore their definition is not that of modern digital cameras, but their charm and their beauty remain today definitely fascinating. At that time the divers who were diving in Lavezzi to meet Groupers were not many but they had “bad” habit to take with you hard-boiled eggs to give them as food order to be able to photograph more closely. We too were brought along something to give them something to eat but, like good sub, knowing that was not the right food they had with us the fish. As you can see the food they intended finished regularly in the jaws of Sparids, probably because Groupers engaged in their courtship did not have much appetite.

Author: Marco Ciolli

 

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