Night Encounters - Gilt-head bream
At night, most fish slow down their activity, some species sleep, others enter a sort of stasis, others reduce their metabolism to a minimum while remaining alert and vigilant to dangers. Night Encounters Gilt-head bream Incontri notturni Orata Sparus aurata intotheblue.it
We can say that fish actually take micro-sleeps both during the day and during the night. To us humans it seems impossible that fish sleep since they do not have eyelids on their eyes, except for sharks and a few other species, so they basically sleep with their eyes open.
Otherwise there are some species that are truly nocturnal. First of all in the Mediterranean, the Brown meagre, Mureha helena and as we see in this video, some species of sparids such as Gilt-head Bream Sparus aurata.
Gilt-head Bream (Sparus aurata Linnaeus, 1758) is a bony fish of the sea and brackish waters, belonging to the Sparidae family. The name derives from the characteristic gold-colored stripe that the fish shows between its eyes.
Distribution and habitat
The gilt-head bream is present throughout the Mediterranean basin and in the eastern Atlantic, from the extreme south of the British Isles to Cape Verde. It is a strictly coastal fish and lives between 5 and 150 m from the coast; it frequents both hard and sandy bottoms, it is particularly widespread on the border between the two substrates. It normally leads a solitary life or in small groups. It is a very euryhaline species, so much so that it can frequently be found in lagoons and estuaries, but it is extremely sensitive to low temperatures. It is very common in Italian seas.
Description
It is distinguished by having a very convex head profile and a mandible that is slightly shorter than the upper jaw. On the front of each jaw there are 4-6 large canine teeth, followed by 3-5 series of upper and 3-69 lower molariform teeth.
The body is oval, elevated and depressed. The dorsal fin is single with 11 spiny rays and 12-13 soft ones. The scales on the snout, preorbital and interorbital are absent. The lateral line includes 75-85 scales.
The back is bluish grey and the sides are silvery with thin longitudinal grey lines. A black and a golden band are interposed between the eyes. The scapular region is black, this colour continues on the upper part of the operculum, whose margin is reddish. The dorsal fin is bluish grey, with a darker longitudinal median band.
The maximum length of the gilt-head bream is 70 cm, but the most common is between 20 and 50 cm; it can reach a weight of about 10 kg.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparus_aurata
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilt-head_bream
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