Blackspot seabream

A deep-bodied bream with a rosy-silver sheen, a steep forehead and an enormous dark eye that takes up much of the head. The giveaway is a smudged black spot sitting right where the lateral line begins, just above the gill cover. Young fish are paler and greyer; older ones take on a coppery pink along the back and fade to silver-white on the belly.

Around the Maltese islands this is mostly a fish of the drop-offs and the deep bottom rather than the reef. Adults live from around 150 m down to several hundred metres, so a recreational diver almost never meets one. The fish you may see are juveniles and sub-adults, which spend their first years in coastal water and can turn up hanging over deep sand or along the base of a wall on the deeper Gozo and Comino sites, generally below 40 m.

It is a slow, unhurried swimmer that hovers just off the bottom in loose groups, picking at crustaceans, worms, molluscs and small fish. Most Maltese divers know it from the fish counter rather than from the water, where it is a familiar and rather expensive market fish.