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Fish

Red mullet

Mullus surmuletus

Mullus surmuletus Linnaeus, 1758 · Mullidae WoRMS 126986

Reference photos

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Red and brown stripes run the length of a moderately elongate body, and a pair of long chin barbels hangs under the jaw. Snuffles through the sediment for buried crustaceans, worms and molluscs.

Depth

3 to 90 m, with records down to 409 m

Size

Up to 40 cm, commonly around 25 cm; to 1 kg and 11 years old

Habitat

Demersal on sandy and muddy bottoms, and at times over rocky, broken and rough ground

Behaviour

Snuffles through the sediment for buried prey; spawns May to July, with pelagic eggs and larvae

Diet

I eat

  • Shrimps, amphipods and other small crustaceans taken off the seabed
  • Polychaete worms and molluscs dug out of the sediment
  • Bottom-living fish

Eats me

Where you'd find it

Mostly seen in the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the North Sea, and only here and there elsewhere.

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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