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Blackspot seabream fishing: the fish once taken for two species

For a long time this fish carried two scientific names — one for the young and one for the old. The Italian Wikipedia writes: *Pagellus bogaraveo* used to be applied only to juveniles, while the adults, thought to be a different species, were called *Pagellus centrodontus*. Today it is clear that both are the same fish; the marine species register WoRMS lists *Pagellus centrodontus* as a no longer valid name of *Pagellus bogaraveo*. This article is about the blackspot seabream — in German Rote Fleckbrasse or Graubarsch, in Spanish besugo, in Portuguese goraz.

Why people saw two species

The sources themselves explain why the confusion is understandable. According to the Italian Wikipedia, the young are silvery with a light brown or greenish back, and their black spot can be barely visible or missing altogether. The young also live somewhere else: close to the coast over sand, often in seagrass meadows — the adults, by contrast, at 150 to 700 metres of depth over mud, and also over rock on offshore banks. A silvery fish without a spot in shallow water and a red fish with a spot on the continental slope: it is understandable that people saw two species in them. ⚠️ When exactly the two names were merged is not stated by any of the sources we read.

A name from Marseille

It was described by the Danish zoologist Morten Thrane Brünnich in 1768, as *Sparus bogaraveo*, with Marseille as the type locality — according to the English Wikipedia. The ETYFish Project (page on the seabreams, version v. 8.0 – 8 June 2026) explains the species name: from “bogue-raveo”, the local name of this species in Marseille. The genus *Pagellus* goes back to Valenciennes (1830) and, according to ETYFish, is a diminutive of “pagel” — the name used by sailors on the Mediterranean coast of Provence and Languedoc for the related species *Pagellus erythrinus*. So the scientific name is twice over fishermen’s language from southern France. ⚠️ What “bogue-raveo” means, the source does not explain.

The spot and the eyes

The identifying mark is right there in the name: FishBase gives as a distinguishing feature a black spot above the base of the pectoral fin. The Italian Wikipedia describes it as roundish or triangular, behind the gill cover at eye level, and the lateral line runs right through it. The back and upper flanks are reddish, the belly silvery with a pink sheen, the fins pink. The body is deep and laterally compressed.

The second feature is the eyes. According to the English Wikipedia, their diameter is greater than the length of the snout. Fishermen noticed this too, as the list of names in GBIF shows (key 2392557, 174 entries, read on 30 Sept 2026): Italian “Occhione”, the *big eye*, Turkish “mandagöz mercanı”, the bream with the *buffalo eye*, Slovenian “Okati ribon”, Serbian “Rumenac okan”. The French Wikipedia records the nickname “beaux yeux” — *beautiful eyes* — and explicitly gives their size as the reason.

  • Size: FishBase gives 70 cm standard length as the maximum, with 30 cm being common; the heaviest published weight is 4 kg, the greatest age 15 years.
  • Fins: according to FishBase 12 to 13 spines and 11 to 13 soft rays in the dorsal fin, 3 spines in the anal fin.
  • Teeth: at the front small and pointed, at the sides larger, flatter teeth (English Wikipedia) — the Italian Wikipedia calls them molar-like, in two to three rows.

Where it holds and what it eats

  • Distribution: according to FishBase the eastern Atlantic from Norway to Cap Blanc in Mauritania, including the Mediterranean — there “rare beyond Sicily”, rare east of Sicily. Plus the Canary Islands, the Azores and records off Iceland. The range spans 65° to 20° North.
  • Depth: FishBase gives 150 to 700 metres, mostly 150 to 300 metres, benthopelagic — that is, on the bottom and above it. The English Wikipedia differentiates: in the Mediterranean down to 400 metres, in the Atlantic down to 700 metres.
  • Bottom: rock, sand and mud; the adults, according to the English Wikipedia, mainly on the continental slope over mud.
  • Diet: FishBase: “omnivorous, but feed mainly on crustaceans, mollusks, worms and small fish” — an omnivore that nevertheless eats mainly crustaceans, molluscs, worms and small fish.
  • Migration: according to FishBase, the sexually mature fish move to the edges of the shelf to spawn, from January to June.

First male, then female

The blackspot seabream is a hermaphrodite that changes sex from male to female — the technical term is protandrous. FishBase: they become females at 20 to 30 cm in length. The English Wikipedia explains it in more detail: early in life all fish are males; between two and seven years of age they can become females. A female of 31 to 41 cm standard length can, according to Wikipedia, lay 70,000 to 500,000 eggs. This has a consequence worth keeping in mind: ⚠️ anyone who deliberately takes the large fish is, in this species, mainly taking females. That is a conclusion drawn from the biology, not a cited source.

How it is fished — and why you should be careful

FishBase lists the blackspot seabream as a gamefish and as a species of commercial fisheries, price category “Medium”. The English Wikipedia names trawls, gillnets and bottom longlines as the gear of commercial fishermen, semi-industrial and artisanal, and also calls it a gamefish. The Italian Wikipedia adds a sentence for anglers: it also bites on the hook in “bolentino di profondità” — bottom fishing with natural bait at great depth. In Spain, according to the Spanish Wikipedia, it is the most prized seabream of all and a staple of the Christmas dinner, for example as besugo a la madrileña or a la donostiarra.

⚠️ What follows is a conclusion drawn from its biology, not a cited source: a fish that mostly holds at 150 to 300 metres over mud and sand and eats mainly crustaceans, molluscs, worms and small fish wants a bait on the bottom — and a rig that can get that deep in the first place. The large eyes suit a fish from dim deep water. The juveniles, by contrast, live close to the coast — and they are exactly the ones you should release.

Because the stock is the real story of this fish. The IUCN lists it as “Near Threatened”. FishBase rates its vulnerability to fishing as “High” (64 out of 100). According to the Italian Wikipedia, catches in the Strait of Gibraltar fell by 67 % within four years; a long life and slow maturation make the species, according to the same source, particularly sensitive to overfishing, although stocks in the Mediterranean appear to be in considerably better condition. Minimum sizes, bag limits and closed seasons are set by each country — check them locally. And a fish from great depth cannot be brought up without consequences: if you want to release it, you have to plan for that from the start.

Five contradictions, left open

  • Omnivore or predator? FishBase and the English, German, Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedias call it an omnivore — the English one even lists plant material. The Italian Wikipedia, by contrast, says tersely: “Carnivoro” — carnivore.
  • How heavy? FishBase and the English Wikipedia: 4 kg. The German Wikipedia: 5 kg. The Spanish: more than 6 kilos, and most often around 5 kilos — even though in the same paragraph it gives a usual length of 20 to 40 cm.
  • Mature from when? FishBase: 31.4 cm. The English Wikipedia: at 4 to 5 years at 22 to 25 cm. The German: 25 cm. The Spanish: at two years at 15 to 20 cm.
  • When does it spawn? FishBase: January to June. The English Wikipedia: all year round, with peaks depending on the region — off the British Isles August to October, in the Bay of Biscay January to April, in the Mediterranean January to May. The Spanish writes: in winter, but in the western Mediterranean June to September.
  • Who changes sex? FishBase and the German Wikipedia describe the change as the rule. The Spanish calls about 10 % of the fish protandrous hermaphrodites, the Italian says about 10 % remain hermaphrodites even as adults, the French that some never change. And incidentally: the English and Italian Wikipedias call it gregarious, the Portuguese mostly solitary.

Six names that lead to the wrong fish

  • “Graubarsch”. The German trade name (literally *grey perch*) is doubly misleading: the blackspot seabream is not a perch but a seabream (Sparidae) — and it is not grey but reddish. “Seekarpfen” (*sea carp*) also appears in the GBIF list; a carp it certainly is not.
  • “Besugo”. In Spain this is the name of this species — but the Spanish Wikipedia also lists “Besugo” as a collective name for many fish, and GBIF gives “Besugo” for the red porgy (*Pagrus pagrus*) as well. In Portuguese, “Besugo” appears in the list alongside “Goraz”.
  • “Pandora”. Appears in the English GBIF list — but in English it is the common name of the related *Pagellus erythrinus*, the species after which the whole genus is named.
  • “Red Sea Bream”. Sounds like the Red Sea — but according to FishBase it does not occur there at all. What is meant is the *red* bream.
  • “Dorade” and “Zeebrasem”. French “Dorade rose” and simply “dorade”, Dutch “Zeebrasem”, German “Meerbrasse” — these are names for whole groups of seabreams. Order “dorade” and you will usually get a different fish.
  • Contaminated lists. The GBIF list contains “Esparideos” — the name of the whole family —, Swedish “flåckpagell” with a typo next to the correct “fläckpagell”, and for Croatian “Arbun Grbić”, although “arbun” usually stands for the related *Pagellus erythrinus*. A list of names is a collection, not a dictionary.

That leaves the question every article in this series starts with: when. Depth, bottom and diet are covered above, and they are fixed. What changes every day is everything else — air pressure and its direction, wind, current, drift, the distance to dusk and dawn. If you fish at 200 metres, you head far out, and every trip costs: the time window is half the work. That is exactly what StrikeAhead calculates — it takes the conditions on your water and tells you when the trip is worth it. And because spots at this depth are not easy to find, StrikeAhead Pathfinder tells you who to go out with: curated guides and skippers, personally vetted before listing — licence and insurance —, with verified catches instead of promo photos, no paid ranking and, for you as an angler, no booking fee.

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