The white seabream is the silver, black-striped fish of Mediterranean rocks, 22 to 30 centimeters long, with a black spot at the base of the tail; it lives in small groups and is born male before becoming female. You see it all year round at La Gabinière and Mérouville.
Where to dive to see the white seabream?
FranceWallLa Gabinière (Port-Cros)
French Mediterranean: Riviera, Provence and CorsicaPeak season all year round: all over the rock
FranceReefMérouville (Lavezzi Islands)
French Mediterranean: Riviera, Provence and CorsicaPeak season all year round: all over the rock, with rainbow wrasse
How do you identify a white seabream?
The white seabream is a sea bream with an oval, deep, compressed body, an arched back and the front of the head darker than the rest. Its color is silver to silvery gray, crossed by seven to nine vertical bands that alternate between very dark and paler, with a black saddle-shaped spot on top of the tail base and a black dot above the base of the pectoral fin. The mouth has eight incisors at the front, sometimes ten in the upper jaw, and several rows of molars. It most often measures 22 to 30 centimeters and weighs 200 to 500 grams, and it can reach 45 centimeters and 1.9 kg.
White seabream in pictures
How does the white seabream live?
It lives throughout the Mediterranean and in the southwestern Black Sea, and in the eastern Atlantic from Brittany to Senegal, Madeira and as far as South Africa, with a Mediterranean subspecies, Diplodus sargus sargus, and an Atlantic subspecies, Diplodus sargus cadenati. Benthopelagic and coastal, it lives over rocky bottoms broken up by sand and over seagrass beds, mostly between 1 and 30 meters and down to 50; very active, it visits the surf zone from dawn. Gregarious and active by day, it moves in small groups or schools. Omnivorous when young and carnivorous as an adult, it picks algae, sea urchins, worms, gastropods, bivalves and small crustaceans off the bottom. It lives about ten years.
Where and when can you see white seabream in France?
It is there all year round and needs no searching. At La Gabinière, in Port-Cros National Park, it is all over the rock. At Mérouville, near the Lavezzi Islands, it is everywhere on the rock, with the rainbow wrasse. The safety stop, along the edge, is the right time to watch it graze.
Does the white seabream change sex?
The white seabream is born male and becomes female as it ages: it is a protandrous hermaphrodite. It matures at 2 years, at about 17 centimeters, and spawns in late winter and spring, from January to May, when the water warms from 15 to 18 °C. Abundant from Brittany to South Africa, it is listed as Least Concern by the IUCN.
Our tip
It is all over the rock and takes no searching: watch it graze, head down, in a small group. Approach without sudden moves and it stays within camera range; one fin kick and the group moves two meters away. Count the bars and look for the black saddle at the base of the tail to tell it from similar seabreams.