Fish
Thick-lipped mullet
Chelon labrosus
Chelon labrosus (Risso, 1827) · Mugilidae WoRMS 126977
Reference photos
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A silvery, elongate mullet with a thick upper lip, it keeps to the bottom in shallow inshore water and gathers in schools, often running up into brackish lagoons and fresh water.
Depth
2-15 m, in shallow inshore water
Size
Up to 70-75 cm, commonly around 32 cm
Habitat
A demersal, catadromous fish of shallow inshore water, frequently entering brackish lagoons and fresh water
Behaviour
Adults school inshore, occasionally moving northward in summer as temperatures rise; spawns at sea in winter
Diet
I eat
- Benthic diatoms and epiphytic algae, and seaweeds grazed off the bottom
- Detritus and debris
- Small seabed invertebrates, chiefly amphipods, ostracods and small snails; juveniles feed only on zooplankton
Eats me
- Fish-eating seabirds, in particular the great cormorant
- Wading shore birds, in particular the grey heron
Where you'd find it
Mostly seen in the English Channel and the Irish Sea, and only here and there elsewhere.
Sources
Open-access references behind this page. Every statement on this page was read out of one of them; anything that could not be traced to a source was taken off the page rather than left standing. Each link was checked on the date shown, and confirmed then to be about this species.
Grey thick-lipped mullet (Chelon labrosus)
Marine Life Information Network, Marine Biological Association of the UK
MarLINlink checked 2026-08-30
World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS Editorial Board)
TaxonomyCC BY 4.0link checked 2026-08-30
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