Spotted seabass (Dicentrarchus punctatus) — spearfishing in Morocco

Legal size: 15 cm; fork length
Maximum size: Up to 70 cm, commonly 25 to 45
Maximum age: Around 10 years
Depth: Surface to 30 m, mostly the first 10

Atlantic Mediterranean Difficulty · Technical IUCN · Least Concern

The legal size is set by order no. 1154-88 as amended — below it, fishing, transporting, buying or selling the species is prohibited. See the full table.

What the legal size does not tell you

Legal size: 15 cm (fork length)
First maturity: Around 25 to 30 cm, at two to three years, in the few Atlantic studies; not measured here

The legal size comes from the 1988 order, written for commercial fishing. The maturity sizes come from scientific studies, each carried out in one particular area: they give an order of magnitude, not a rule.

01 Telling it apart

A seabass in every proportion — long, silver, two separate dorsals of equal size, a big mouth — that keeps its scattered small black spots on the back and flanks into adulthood, and carries a sharp dark spot on the gill cover. The spots are irregular, never in rows, and denser above the lateral line.

At distance it is a silver bass in the surf. The spots are visible from a couple of metres in clear water and vanish in murk, so the two species are told apart only close up: a plain-flanked adult is a European seabass, a spotted one this species.

It runs smaller: a 50 cm spotted bass is a very good one.

02 Habitat

Surf beaches, river mouths, lagoon channels and the white water over shallow rock and sand. It is even more a fish of the shallow, turbid, moving water than the European seabass, and it tolerates warmer water, which is why it replaces its cousin southward.

It feeds on the small fish, shrimps and crabs that the surf turns over, often in water less than three metres deep.

Schools of small fish are common; big fish are alone or in small groups.

03 Where to find it in Morocco

The Atlantic, from Tangier to Dakhla, and common on every surf beach and river mouth of that coast: the Moroccan Atlantic bass a spearo meets is more often this species than the European one. Present but scarce in the Mediterranean.

Its biology is poorly studied everywhere. The maturity figure is a best reading of the few Atlantic papers and should be treated as approximate.

04 Spawning

Late winter to spring, from roughly January to April, inshore and in estuaries. The young grow up in lagoons and river mouths.

The Moroccan legal minimum of 15 cm is well below the size at which it first spawns.

05 Behaviour

Wary but less so than the European seabass, and far more tolerant of very shallow water. It hunts in the surf in small groups, working the edge of the white water, and it comes to a still diver in murk without much hesitation.

It reacts to movement and flash more than to bubbles, and a fish that has turned away in the surf often comes back on the next wave.

How you approach it

Ambush in the surf, shallow, on the edge of the white water: the fish works the line where the wave breaks and it passes within arm’s reach.
Hold still through the set. It turns away on one wave and comes back on the next; the diver who moves loses it.
A short gun, 75 to 90 cm. The water is shallow, the ranges short and the target small.
Check the flank before you shoot, and the size after. Two species, two legal sizes.

What people get wrong

01 That a spotted bass is a young European seabass. Young European bass are spotted too, but they lose the spots by 30 cm; this one keeps them at 60.
02 That the two species share a legal size. The European seabass is 17 cm, the spotted 15, both at the fork.
03 That it is a Mediterranean fish. It is above all an Atlantic fish, and the commonest bass on the Moroccan Atlantic.

Do not confuse it with

The species this one is taken for, and what tells them apart.

European seabass, Dicentrarchus labrax — a plain silver flank once adult, a fainter gill-cover spot, and a bigger fish; 17 cm legal.
Grey mullet — the same water, but a small mouth at the tip of a blunt snout and no separate spiny dorsal.
Leerfish, Lichia amia — deeper-bodied with a wavy lateral line, in the same surf, without a spiny first dorsal.