Red porgy (Pagrus pagrus) — spearfishing in Morocco

01 Telling it apart

A deep, robust seabream that reads pink to red-silver in the water, with a rounded forehead, a small mouth, and small pale blue spots scattered over the upper flank that show in good light. The tail is forked with white tips on the lobes. There is no gill-cover blotch and no gold brow.

At distance it is a pale, high-backed fish that holds a metre or two off the bottom and moves in slow, deliberate glides, tilting down to feed. Big fish are more uniformly pink; juveniles are paler with faint bars.

The colour is the tell in most water: no other seabream on this coast is this pink.

02 Habitat

Mixed bottom: stone fields, rock breaking into sand, the sandy fringe at the base of a wall, gravel and rubble slopes. It feeds on crustaceans, molluscs and small fish, mostly on or just above the bottom.

The productive ground is the transition, where rock gives way to sand and a fish can hunt the edge of both. It is rarely in the surge zone and rarely deep inside a reef.

Adults are usually deeper than 15 m; juveniles use shallower seagrass and sand.

03 Where to find it in Morocco

Both seaboards, and very common on the central and southern Atlantic, where the mixed stone-and-sand ground it likes runs for hundreds of kilometres.

No Moroccan study has published its maturity or spawning. The figures on this sheet are from the Canary Islands, the same Atlantic stock, and from the Mediterranean.

04 Spawning

Spring and early summer: March to June in the Canaries, a little later in the Mediterranean.

Because the species turns male late and large, the spawning stock depends on two size classes at once: the mid-sized females and the few large males. Remove the large fish from a ground and the males go with them.

05 Behaviour

It is often in small, loose groups spaced out over the bottom, holding in midwater above the sand and coming down slowly. It is curious in a measured way: it circles wide, keeps a distance, and closes only on a diver who has been still.

It is less nervous than the gilthead and less bold than the sar. Patience works on it better than movement: the fish that has circled twice at the edge of visibility comes in on the third pass if nothing has changed.

Large fish are more solitary and keep more distance.

How you approach it

A deep ambush at the sand edge, lying flat on the bottom against rock. It comes down to a still diver who looks like part of the ground.
It circles wide before it commits. Patience beats moving: stay put through two passes and take the third.
Work the transition, not the reef: the fringe where stone breaks into sand is where it hunts.
A 90 to 100 cm gun. The ranges are a little longer than in the surge and the fish is solid.
Big fish keep more distance and are alone. If a group comes in, the one holding off behind it is the one worth waiting for.

What people get wrong

01 That it is a small pageot. The pageots (Pagellus) are slimmer, smaller and have a pointed head; the porgy has a rounded forehead and reaches 90 cm.
02 That the big pink fish is a big female. In this species the big fish are the males, the reverse of the gilthead and the sars.
03 That it lives on rock like the sars. It hunts the edge of sand and stone, a level below the surge.

Do not confuse it with

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

Gilthead, Sparus aurata — silver-grey rather than pink, with a gold bar between the eyes and a dark blotch on the gill cover.
Bluespotted seabream, Pagrus caeruleostictus — the same pink build with much bolder blue spots over the head and back, and a steeper forehead.
Common pandora, Pagellus erythrinus — slimmer, with a pointed snout and a straighter head profile, and red rather than pink.
Common dentex, Dentex dentex — steel grey rather than pink, with visible canines and a heavier tail wrist.