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Goldsinny wrasse

Ctenolabrus rupestris

Ctenolabrus rupestris (Linnaeus, 1758) · Labridae WoRMS 126964

Reference photos

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The smallest wrasse in British and Irish waters: slender, brown, greenish or orange-red, and told from every other wrasse by two dark patches, one at the front of the dorsal fin and one just in front of the tail fin.

Depth

1 to 50 m, adults deeper than young, which come inshore and even into low-shore rock pools

Size

Up to 18 cm total length, commonly 10 to 12 cm

Habitat

Rocky and weed-covered shores, boulders and eelgrass, with crevices and caves to hide in

Behaviour

Solitary and territorial; a male defends a patch of rocky ground up to two square metres, may keep it for years, and spawns in summer

Diet

I eat

  • Bryozoans, the encrusting sea mats that grow over rock and weed
  • Small bottom-living crustaceans and molluscs, especially gastropods
  • Parasites picked off the skin of other fish, including the sea lice of farmed salmon

Eats me

Where you'd find it

Found around most of Britain and Ireland, though less often in the North Sea and the waters west of Ireland.

ChannelCeltic SeaNorth SeaIrish SeaW of IrelandW of Scotland
Often seenNow and thenWhere PEBL filmsBased on marine survey records (OBIS). Blank seas can mean nobody has looked there, not that the animal is absent.

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.

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