A pale silver snapper with a yellow stripe along the flank and an eye noticeably large for its head, hanging beside a wreck or a coral head in a loose school that faces into the current all day.
The eye explains the day. Snappers of this kind feed at night, spreading over sand and seagrass to hunt small fish, shrimps and crabs, and returning to the same structure before dawn. The daytime school is a resting formation, and disturbing it costs the fish energy it planned to spend after dark.
They are among the most commonly caught reef fish in the region, and this species is a mainstay of small-boat fisheries throughout the 🌊 Indian Ocean - not spectacular, not rare, and landed by the tonne.
Juveniles use seagrass and mangrove shallows as a nursery before moving out to the reef, which puts them in exactly the habitat most likely to be dredged or filled - a pattern that repeats through this catalogue often enough to be the single most useful thing a reader can take from it.
The species. Lutjanus lutjanus Bloch 1790 - from Ikan (=fish) Lutjang. ETYFish
- silver-yellow fish with a broad yellow stripe along the middle of the flank
- large eye set high, mouth reaching to below it
- hangs in loose schools beside structure, all facing into the current
- length up to 35 cm
