Serranidae

Comber

Serranus cabrilla

Hunting across rock seagrass sand and mud

• Brown
• Red
• White
• Globally widespread
• Marine fish
• Other
• Medium

Adorned with vertical crimson bars and delicate horizontal yellow striping, the comber is an elegant, highly inquisitive small serranid inhabiting sublittoral reefs across the warm temperate eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. Its slender, moderately compressed body displays a sandy-yellow or tan background crossed by seven to nine broad, vertical dark reddish-brown bars on the upper flanks, while the lower sides feature two to three longitudinal yellow stripes. The head is decorated with slender diagonal orange and lavender-blue facial lines running through the eyes, leading to a slightly notched caudal fin. Ranging from the English Channel and Bay of Biscay throughout the Mediterranean and Black Seas south to South Africa, it occupies rocky seabeds, coralline algal reefs, Posidonia oceanica meadows, and sandy shelves between five and five hundred meters depth. Remarkable in reproductive biology as a simultaneous hermaphrodite capable of producing both viable eggs and sperm simultaneously, this solitary predator perches on bottom rubble, darting forward to capture small teleosts, decapod crabs, and polychaetes. Maximum total length reaches forty centimetres.

Sources: FishBase — Comber, Serranus cabrilla