Porkfish

The porkfish is a boldly striped Caribbean reef fish in yellow and silvery blue, with two black bars crossing its face and shoulder. It typically reaches about 25 cm, though it can grow to 40.6 cm.

This is the only grunt species in the Caribbean with two black bars crossing its yellow stripes - no other grunt shares that pattern.

This fish has a deep, flattened body with a high back and a short, blunt head. Its mouth sits low and horizontal, with fleshy lips. The flanks show alternating yellow and silvery-blue stripes, yellow fins, and a deeply forked tail. A black bar runs diagonally from above the eye to the upper lip, and a second black bar runs from the front of the dorsal fin down to the base of the pectoral fin. Juveniles look different: no black bars, but two black stripes along the middle of the body, a black blotch near the tail base, and a bright yellow head.

Lives on reefs and rocky bottoms in shallow water from Florida and the Bahamas through the Caribbean to Brazil, at depths of about 2 to 20 metres. It is active at night and often moves in large schools, sometimes alongside white grunts, while juveniles shelter in beds of seagrass.

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  African Striped Grunt

  Parapristipoma octolineatum

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  Black Margate

  Anisotremus surinamensis

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  Blubberlip

  Plectorhinchus gibbosus

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  Bluestriped Grunt

  Haemulon sciurus

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  Caesar Grunt

  Haemulon carbonarium

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  French grunt

  Haemulon flavolineatum