African Striped Grunt
Parapristipoma octolineatum
Blubberlip
Plectorhinchus gibbosus
About
This sweetlips earns its nicknames, hotlips and blubberlip, from the fleshy lips that grow more swollen every year. It grows up to 75 cm and starts life doing an odd trick: drifting on its side to look like a dead leaf.
Also known as: brown sweetlips, dusky sweetlips, gibbus sweetlips, humpback sweetlips, blubber-lip bream, black sweetlip, brown blubber-lips, brown sweet-lips, hairy hotlips, rubber-lip bream, harry hotlips
- Length
- 75 cm
- Depth
- up to 25 m
How to tell it apart
Several sweetlips species look alike. Check the lips: on this species they are unmistakably thicker and more swollen than on other sweetlips, especially in older fish.
Appearance
An adult is silvery-grey to brownish, with dark edges on each scale, a dusky face, and a thin dark bar near the front of the gill cover that has a black rear edge. The soft part of the dorsal fin, the anal fin, and the tail are all dusky. Its lips are thick and fleshy, and they become grossly swollen as the fish ages. Young fish look quite different: brownish with a pink or see-through tail, and a body flattened side-on rather than upright.
Habitat
It lives over coastal reefs, sandbanks, and near river mouths, sometimes even pushing into fresh water. Adults favour sheltered inshore reefs but also turn up on deeper offshore reefs, often in small groups, at depths of about 8 to 25 m. Small juveniles stay close to sheltered sandy shorelines.
Did you know?
Juveniles float on their side near sheltered sandy shores, drifting like a dead leaf on the surface to avoid being noticed.
Log it in Into the Blue
Describe what you saw and we name it, then keep every species you find in your Oceandex.
