Bony fish · Perciformes · Gerreidae

Yellowfin Mojarra

Gerres cinereus

Least Concern

The species is abundant and widely distributed; it faces no significant short-term risk. See full glossary

A silvery mojarra with a deep, gleaming body and seven or eight faint vertical bars on the flanks. It works over sandy bottoms and seagrass meadows in the shallow waters of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, rummaging in the sediment for worms, crustaceans and molluscs.

Size

20 cm – 40 cm

Diet

Carnivore

Feeds mainly on other animals.

Social structure

Colony

Lives in large concentrations, often for breeding reasons.

Sighting difficulty

Easy

OceanCarnivore Colonial Fish Ocean

40countries

Fun facts

Its mouth extends downwards into a tube when it feeds, which lets it dig in the sand without stopping 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.

Life cycle & biology

Skeleton type: Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (fish)
Habitat & environment: Shallow sandy bottoms, seagrass meadows and mangroves of the American Atlantic

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