Striped red mullet

The striped red mullet is the pink-and-gold fish you see nose-down on sand with two long whiskers sweeping the sediment. Those barbels are chemical sensors under the chin, and the fish drops them into the seabed to find worms, shrimps and small molluscs. The body is elongated with a steeply sloping but not vertical forehead, the eyes sit high, and the colour is variable: often a reddish or rosy back over a white belly, with a dark red stripe running from the snout through the eye to the tail and two or three golden-yellow lines along the lower flank. The first dorsal fin carries dark red or brown bands, which is a useful identification point. Fish around Malta are typically 15 to 25 cm and can reach 40 cm.

It works sand, shell gravel, mixed rubble and the clean patches between Posidonia clumps, mostly between about 5 and 60 metres, and is one of the commonest bottom fish on Maltese shore dives: the sand at Ċirkewwa, Xatt l-Aħmar, Ġnejna, Armier and the sandy plains around the wrecks all hold them. Feeding fish stir up small clouds of sediment, and other species learn to follow them, so a red mullet grubbing along is often trailed by wrasse and seabream waiting for something to bolt.

Colour changes fast. A resting fish on sand goes pale and washed out with reddish blotches, then flushes deep rosy pink when it moves or is startled, which is why the same species can look like two different fish on one dive. Spawning runs from late spring into midsummer.