The biggest snapper in these waters, a meter and a half (5 ft) of copper-red fish with a heavy head and visible canines, sitting under a ledge or inside a wreck and watching a diver without moving.
Its life runs backwards from where you find it. Adults live on the reef, but the young grow up in mangrove creeks and estuaries, and they push far up rivers - hundreds of kilometers inland in some catchments, into water that is entirely fresh. They spend years there before dropping back down to the sea, which makes this reef fish dependent on a habitat most reef fish never see.
That dependency is not academic. Where mangroves are cleared, the adult population on the neighboring reef falls years later, and the connection was invisible until somebody tagged the fish.
It hunts at night, taking fish and large crustaceans, and it is one of the few reef fish big enough to be interested in an octopus. Old, heavy individuals from some regions carry ciguatoxins - the flag on this card is about the table, not the reef.
The species. Lutjanus argentimaculatus (Forsskål 1775) - argentum (silver) + maculatus (spotted). ETYFish
- heavy copper-red to maroon body, darker on the back
- steep forehead and a large mouth with obvious canines
- juveniles with pale bars and a blue line under the eye
- usually alone under a ledge or a wreck, unhurried
- length up to 150 cm
