Perches, basses and snappers
Snappers, groupers, sea bass, perch, pomfret and the barramundi. 13 fish on EveryFish so far.
Perches, basses, snappers and their relatives are spiny-finned fish: the front of their dorsal fin is held up by sharp spines, their scales are rough-edged and their pelvic fins sit far forward. For long they were grouped in one vast order, Perciformes, with thousands of species; DNA studies have since split the group, but the name perch-like fish remains in use. Many of the world's best-known food and sport fish belong here.
Groupers, snappers and croakers
Groupers are heavy reef predators that swallow prey whole; many start life female and become male as they grow, and gather in great numbers to spawn, which makes them easy to overfish. Snappers are prized food fish of warm seas. Croakers make drumming sounds with their swim bladders, and the swim bladder of some, such as the ghol of India's west coast and the totoaba of Mexico, is sold dried in East Asia for very high prices, which has driven overfishing.
Bhetki, pomfret and bass
The barramundi, or Asian sea bass, called bhetki in Bengal, lives in rivers, estuaries and coasts from India to Australia and is farmed in ponds and cages. The silver pomfret, a flat, silvery fish of the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, is one of the most valued fish in India and was declared the state fish of Maharashtra in 2023. Largemouth bass is the most popular sport fish of the United States, and European perch and sea bass are common in Europe.
Famous perch-like fish
Still to be written: Barramundi, Pampus argenteus, Atlantic goliath grouper, Blackspotted croaker, European perch, European seabass.
Further reading
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Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Nile perch: Pavel Zuber, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Largemouth bass: Totti, CC BY-SA 4.0, source