The family is called the grunts, and the name is literal. These fish grind the tooth plates at the back of the throat, and the swim bladder sitting right behind works as a sounding box, so the noise carries. Land one and it will grunt in your hands.
By day they do almost nothing. Thirty or forty hang under a ledge or against the reef slope, evenly spaced, facing into the current, and they will let a diver come close. The work happens after dark, when the school breaks up and the fish spread onto sand and seagrass after small fish and crustaceans.
Juveniles look like a different animal: silver-gray with five to seven brown stripes running the length of the body. At around 10 to 12 cm the stripes break apart into the rows of black spots the adult carries for life.
The name came off a 🌊 Red Sea dock. Forsskal collected the fish on the Arabian coast in the 1760s, and gaterinus is gaterin, what the local fishermen called it. It is still caught and sold fresh, though nobody rates it: the flesh carries a faint iodine taste.
The genus. Plectorhinchus Lacepède 1801 - plecto- (plaited) + rhynchus (snout). ETYFish
The species. Plectorhinchus gaterinus (Forsskål 1775) - adjectival form of gaterin. ETYFish
- silvery body covered in even rows of black spots, yellowish below
- yellow fins, also spotted
- thick fleshy lips and a small mouth
- juveniles striped, not spotted, until about 10 cm
- up to 50 cm
