Common dentex

The common dentex is the heavyweight of the Mediterranean sea breams and looks the part: a deep, powerful oval body, a steep forehead that becomes almost humped in old males, and a blunt snout holding four large canine teeth at the front of each jaw. The colour is gunmetal blue-grey over the back fading to silver on the flanks, dusted with small dark blue and violet flecks that only show in good light, with a pale belly and a stiff, slightly forked tail edged in dark. Young fish are lighter and more obviously spotted. Divers around Malta usually see fish of 40 to 60 cm; a metre and fourteen kilos is the ceiling for the species.

Adults are solitary and cautious, patrolling just off the reef where rock meets sand or where a wall falls into the blue, hunting seabream, picarel and squid. Juveniles are more sociable and hang in loose groups over Posidonia edges. Good Maltese places to meet them are the deeper parts of the Ċirkewwa reef, the Um El Faroud and other deep wrecks, the drop-offs at Ras il-Ħobż and Dwejra, and the outer walls of Comino, mostly between about 15 and 50 metres.

A dentex almost always sees you first. Typically you get one long, level look from a fish hovering at the limit of visibility before it tilts away. They are here all year but are seen more often in spring and early summer, when they come shallower to spawn between March and May.