Sand Steenbras

Sand Steenbras (Lithognathus Mormoryus) belongs to the class Osteichthyes, subclass Actinopterygii, order Perciformes, suborder Percoidei, family Sparidae. It is a common fish all over the Mediterranean Sea and in the warm waters of the eastern Atlantic, it prefers coastal areas even reaching a few meters from the water’s edge. This fish is caught for human consumption throughout most of its range but is not in general a targeted species due to its small size. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed its conservation status as being of “least concern”. la mormora

It is a beautiful elegant silver-colored fish with six very dark and highlighted vertical bands and an equal number of narrower and less evident bands, the body is long and compressed laterally, the profile is high and rounded. The lips are fleshy and the teeth are arranged in different rows; it can reach a length of 30 cm. and a weight that rarely reaches one kilogram. It has gregarious habits and we find it in small groups in a depth mixed with rock and sand at a depth that hardly exceeds 20 meters. la mormora

The sand steenbras feeds mainly on invertebrates which it picks off the seabed. Its diet includes gastropod molluscs, bivalve molluscs, polychaete worms, crabs, amphipods, copepods, sea urchins and small fish. It is gregarious and sometimes forms large schools. As a protandric hermaphrodite, the sand steenbras starts its adult life as a male and later changes its sex to female. In the Mediterranean Sea it reaches maturity as a male at age two, at a length of about 14 cm (6 in), and changes sex at age four to seven at a length of about 21 to 28 cm.

(extract from Wikipedia)

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