Grey mullet

Grey mullet are the silver, torpedo-shaped fish that hang just under the surface in every Maltese harbour, marina and sheltered creek. The thicklip grey mullet, Chelon labrosus, is the species most often close inshore: a blunt-headed, heavy-bodied fish, dark blue-grey on the back with silver flanks marked by faint grey longitudinal lines, two widely separated dorsal fins, and the thick upper lip that gives it its name. Other species share the same water and are easy to confuse, particularly the flathead grey mullet Mugil cephalus, known locally as mulett kbir, which is larger with a fatty eyelid, and the golden grey mullet Chelon auratus, or lostru, which has a distinct golden blotch on the gill cover. Common sizes are 30 to 50 cm, with a ceiling around 75 cm.

They graze rather than hunt, scraping films of algae, diatoms and organic sediment off rock, ropes, hulls and harbour walls, and processing it with a muscular gizzard-like stomach. Divers meet them in the top few metres at places like Marsamxett and Grand Harbour slipways, Marsascala, Marsaxlokk, Birżebbuġa, Mġarr harbour in Gozo and around any boat mooring, usually as a loose, nervous shoal that drifts away and then reforms behind you.

Around Malta the grey mullet also carries a small cultural stigma. Because harbour fish feed on sediment and outfall-rich silt, mullet caught inside the harbours are often regarded as second-rate eating, while fish taken from clean open coast are a normal food fish.