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Fish

Sand goby

Pomatoschistus minutus

Pomatoschistus minutus (Pallas, 1770) · Gobiidae WoRMS 126928

Reference photos

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A small pale brown or grey goby of sandy and muddy bottoms, marked darker along the sides; it takes its colour from the seabed and buries itself in the sediment when a predator comes.

Depth

Usually to about 20 m, sometimes 60-70 m, with records to 200 m

Size

Up to 10-11 cm long, mature from about 4-6 cm

Habitat

Sandy and muddy bottoms of open coasts, estuaries, lagoons and salt marshes

Behaviour

Usually inactive except when feeding, mainly by day; burrows into the sediment to avoid predators

Diet

I eat

  • Small bottom-living crustaceans, chiefly amphipods, mysids and cumaceans
  • Small polychaete worms taken from the sand and mud
  • Fish eggs and larvae, including the young of its own species

Eats me

  • Gadoid fish, especially cod and whiting
  • Flatfish, including plaice and flounder
  • Fish-eating birds and marine mammals, including harbour seal and harbour porpoise

Where you'd find it

Found around most of Britain and Ireland, though less often in the Celtic 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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