John Dory

The John Dory is one of the strangest fish a diver can meet in Malta. Seen from the side it is a tall, almost circular olive-grey to yellowish-brown plate, finely marbled, with a dark round spot ringed in pale yellow in the middle of each flank. Seen from the front it nearly disappears, because the body is only a couple of centimetres thick. Long trailing spines run along the top of the first dorsal fin, and there is a row of bony bucklers along the base of the dorsal and anal fins. The mouth is the real machinery: it shoots forward into a wide tube in a fraction of a second, sucking in a whole small fish. Maltese fish are usually 25 to 45 cm and the species can reach 90 cm.

It is a slow, solitary, ambushing predator of sand, mixed bottom, deep reef edges and wrecks, officially from 5 to 400 metres but usually deeper than 50. Divers here find them on the sandy plains and hull shadows around the Um El Faroud, P29, P31, Rozi and Imperial Eagle, at the foot of deeper reef slopes, and occasionally very shallow in winter. They stalk prey edge-on, turning that knife-thin profile towards the target so that almost nothing is visible until the mouth fires.

The dark flank spot carries the story behind both the English and the Maltese names: it is said to be the thumbprint of Saint Peter, left when he took a coin from the fish's mouth. Pixxi San Pietru is a well-known and highly regarded fish on the Maltese market, usually landed from deeper water.