Yellowfin Mojarra

• Its mouth extends downwards into a tube when it feeds, which lets it dig in the sand while still swimming and sift the sediment through its gills.
• The juveniles shelter among mangrove roots, which act as a nursery, and the destruction of those mangroves directly affects the adult populations.
• Its mouth is highly protrusible: it projects it downwards like a tube to dig into the sand and suck up buried invertebrates.
• That leaves visible marks on the bottom, small pits that betray where it has been feeding.
• It is silvery with iridescent glints and with faint dark vertical bars, a pattern that blurs against sunlit sand.
• Juveniles use mangroves and seagrass meadows as nurseries before moving on to more open bottoms.
• It is fished on a small scale throughout the Caribbean and is common in local markets.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bony fish)

Habitat and environment

Shallow sandy bottoms, seagrass meadows and mangroves of the American Atlantic

Sources consulted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerres_cinereus