This family is built for estuaries, and this sea has none.
Mojarras across the world are fish of river mouths and brackish lagoons. They tolerate a wide range of salinity, they feed on the invertebrates of soft muddy bottom, and in most tropical regions they are among the first fish you meet where fresh water meets salt. The 🌊 Red Sea has no rivers at all. Nothing flows in; it loses more water to evaporation than it receives, which is why it is saltier than the open ocean.
So the family lives here without the habitat it is designed around, and the substitutes are the shallow sheltered places that behave a little like estuaries without being fed by any river: lagoons behind the reef, sand flats, the edges of mangrove stands, khors and sheltered bays where the water sits warm and still.
This is the one you are most likely to meet in them, small for the family and often in loose schools over shallow sand, with a black tip on the dorsal fin that separates it from its relatives at a glance.
It is a good reminder that a species list tells you about the coast as much as about the fish.
- black tip on the dorsal fin
- silver, smaller and slimmer than the other mojarras here
- shallow lagoons, sand flats and mangrove edges, often in small schools
- up to 30 cm
