Dentex

At twenty meters, above a shallow bordered by Posidonia seagrass, a large silvery silhouette crosses the blue. Massive head, pink and bluish reflections: a dentex.

The young frequent notably the shallow waters and Posidonia seagrass beds, where they can live in groups, while adults generally become more solitary. Another story long obscured its portrait: certain references described the dentex as a fish changing sex.

Yet, among 358 wild dentex studied in Majorca, only three juveniles presented rudimentarily bisexual gonads, with no evidence of habitual sex inversion. Time reserves an even more vertiginous surprise: a specimen studied in Corsica was estimated at 36 years old thanks to its otoliths.

At the Medes Islands, after 19 years of monitoring, the biomass of dentex continued to increase in the marine reserve. Naturalist observations also report that adults can sometimes hunt in groups and drive their prey, a behavior still poorly documented scientifically.

Then comes the night: dentex have been photographed resting on the bottom or in the seagrass, fins deployed, in a distinctly more marbled livery. By day, it cuts through the blue; at night, it blends almost with the bottom.