🐟 Fish · Diplodus annularis
Annular seabream
Sparluin Maltese
The little bream of the seagrass
Meet the Annular seabream
The smallest of the common Maltese breams, a neat oval fish of pale silver-gold, seldom longer than a hand span. Its identity badge is a single narrow black ring encircling the tail stalk, hence annular; there is no dark collar and no row of bars. The pelvic fins are washed yellow, the eye is large relative to the head, and faint golden lines run along the flanks.
Sparlu belong to the seagrass. They hang in small groups just above Posidonia meadows and over sand and rubble at the meadow edge, picking at small crustaceans, worms and bits of algae, and they drop into the blades the moment anything alarms them. Around Malta and Gozo they are everywhere the seagrass is healthy, from about 2 m to 30 m, and they are one of the reliable finds on shallow bay dives at Ġnejna, Mġarr ix-Xini and the Comino channels.
They are heavily fished with small hooks from shore and have the lowest minimum landing size on the Maltese list, 12 cm, which tells you how small they usually are.
When to look: All year over seagrass, and easiest in calm summer conditions when the meadows are clear and the groups hold their position.
Diving with them
- Swim slowly along the boundary between seagrass and sand, which is where they concentrate
- Keep your fins high and your buoyancy tight over Posidonia; the meadow is protected and easily scarred
- They are shy, so stop and wait and they will rise back out of the blades within a minute
- Look for the single black ring on the tail stalk and the yellow-tinged pelvic fins to separate them from young of other breams
- Good subjects for shallow snoot or mid-macro shots against the dark green of the meadow
Can it hurt you?Harmless
Harmless in every respect. It is a small grazing bream with no venom, spines or bite of any consequence.
Easily confused with
- Juvenile white and two-banded seabream are similar in size but show flank bars or a dark collar
- Saddled seabream (Oblada melanura) has a black and white saddle at the tail base rather than a full ring, and is slimmer
- Picarel and bogue are more elongated, cigar-shaped fish rather than deep-bodied breams
Where to meet them: 1 sites
Further reading: EU fish commercial names – Maltese designation Sparlu for Diplodus annularis · Maltese minimum fish size restrictions (Sparlu 12 cm) · Wikipedia – Diplodus annularis · GBIF – Diplodus annularis