The blackfin snapper (''Lutjanus buccanella''), also known as the blackspot snapper, blackfin red snapper, gun-mouth backfin, gun-mouth snapper, redfish and wrenchman is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

of marine

ray-finned fish Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fish or actinopterygians, is a class of bony fish that comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. They are so called because of their lightly built fins made of webbings of sk ...

, a snapper belonging to the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Lutjanidae Lutjanidae or snappers are a family of perciform fishes, mainly marine but with some members inhabiting estuaries and, in some cases, fresh water (e.g., '' Lutjanus goldiei''). The family includes about 113 species. Most species are used for foo ...

. It is native to the western

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...

. It is a commercially important species, though it has been reported to carry the

ciguatera Ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP), also known as ciguatera, is a foodborne illness caused by eating tropical reef fish contaminated with ciguatoxins. Such individual fish are said to be ciguatoxic. Symptoms may include diarrhea, vomiting, numbness ...

toxin.

Taxonomy

The blackfin snapper was first formally described as ''Mesoprion buccanellla'' in 1828 by the French

zoologist Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one ...

Georges Cuvier with the type locality given as jointly as

Martinique Martinique ( ; or ; Kalinago language, Kalinago: or ) is an island in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It was previously known as Iguanacaera which translates to iguana island in Carib language, Kariʼn ...

and St Thomas Island in the

West Indies The West Indies is an island subregion of the Americas, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island country, island countries and 19 dependent territory, dependencies in thr ...

. The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

is based on the local name for this species on Martinique, ''boucanella''.

Description

The blackfin snapper has the typical almond-shaped body of the snappers in the genus ''

Lutjanus ''Lutjanus'' is a genus of marine ray-finned fish, snappers belonging to the Family (biology), family Lutjanidae. They are found in the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. They are predation, predatory fish usually ...

'', its body is relatively deep and laterally compressed. The

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates. Dorsal fins have evolved independently several times through convergent evolution adapting to marine environments, so the fins are not all homologous. They are found ...

is continuous but has two lobes, the

caudal fin Fins are moving appendages protruding from the body of fish that interact with water to generate thrust and help the fish swim. Apart from the tail or caudal fin, fish fins have no direct connection with the back bone and are supported only ...

truncate In mathematics and computer science, truncation is limiting the number of digits right of the decimal point. Truncation and floor function Truncation of positive real numbers can be done using the floor function. Given a number x \in \mathbb ...

, the

pectoral fin Fins are moving appendages protruding from the body of fish that interact with water to generate thrust and help the fish aquatic locomotion, swim. Apart from the tail or caudal fin, fish fins have no direct connection with the vertebral column ...

s are long and the

anal fin Fins are moving appendages protruding from the body of fish that interact with water to generate thrust and help the fish swim. Apart from the tail or caudal fin, fish fins have no direct connection with the back bone and are supported o ...

is rounded. The mouth is large with a slightly protrusible upper jaw which slips under the cheekbone when the mouth is closed. Each jaw has at least one row of pointed conical teeth some of which have developed into canines. The

vomerine teeth The vomer (; ) is one of the unpaired facial bones of the skull. It is located in the midsagittal line, and articulates with the sphenoid, the ethmoid, the left and right palatine bones, and the left and right maxillary bones. The vomer forms t ...

are arranged in a chevron with a posterior extension running down the centre of the roof of mouth; on each side of the roof of the mouth there is a single tooth patch. The preopercular incision and knob are poorly developed. The scale rows on the back extend diagonally from the

lateral line The lateral line, also called the lateral line organ (LLO), is a system of sensory organs found in fish, used to detect movement, vibration, and pressure gradients in the surrounding water. The sensory ability is achieved via modified epithelia ...

. The dorsal fin has 10 spines and 14 soft rays, with a slight incision after the spines, while the anal fin has 3 spines and 8 soft rays. The maximum

total length Fish measurement is the measuring of individual fish and various parts of their anatomies, for data used in many areas of ichthyology, including taxonomy and fishery biology. Overall length Standard length (SL) is the length of a fish measured f ...

recorded for this species is although is more typical, and the maximum published weight is . The overall colour of this species is red fading to silvery-red on the abdomen. The caudal, anal and pelvic fins are yellowish. There is an obvious dark comma at the base of the pectoral fins, which gave this fish its most widely accepted common name. The juveniles are resemble the adults but they have a wide vivid yellow patch on the dorsal part of the

caudal peduncle Fins are moving appendages protruding from the body of fish that interact with water to generate thrust and help the fish swim. Apart from the tail or caudal fin, fish fins have no direct connection with the back bone and are supported only ...

Distribution and habitat

The blackfin snapper is a species of the western Atlantic Ocean. Its range extends from

Bermuda Bermuda is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. Bermuda is an ...

and

North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...

southwards along the Atlantic coast of the United States to the Bahamas, then west into the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

from the

Florida Keys The Florida Keys are a coral island, coral cay archipelago off the southern coast of Florida, forming the southernmost part of the continental United States. They begin at the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula, about south of Miami a ...

, the Flower Garden Banks and vicinity to

Veracruz, Mexico Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave, is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. Located in east ...

south to the northern Yucatan Peninsula and northwestern Cuba. It also extends throughout the

Caribbean Sea The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere, located south of the Gulf of Mexico and southwest of the Sargasso Sea. It is bounded by the Greater Antilles to the north from Cuba ...

, along the South American coast as far south as

Sao Paulo, Brazil SAO or Sao may refer to: Places * Sao civilisation, in Middle Africa from 6th century BC to 16th century AD * Sao, a town in Boussé Department, Burkina Faso * Serb Autonomous Regions (''Srpska autonomna oblast'', SAO), during the breakup of ...

. It occurs over sandy and rocky substrates close to ledges at depths of . The adults are found offshore close to the

continental shelf A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an islan ...

, while the juveniles are normally found in rocky outcroppings in the vicinity of reefs in shallower waters at depths between .

Biology

The blackfin snapper is social species which can aggregate in small schools. It is a predator feeding opportunistically near the sea bed. The adults' diet is dominated by smaller fishes, the juveniles feed on more invertebrates including shrimp and worms, eating more fish as they grow. This species has been recorded as

spawning Spawn is the Egg cell, eggs and Spermatozoa, sperm released or deposited into water by aquatic animals. As a verb, ''to spawn'' refers to the process of freely releasing eggs and sperm into a body of water (fresh or marine); the physical act is ...

throughout the year, with peaks in April and September. Spawning takes place mainly off Jamaica and the eggs are

pelagic The pelagic zone consists of the water column of the open ocean and can be further divided into regions by depth. The word ''pelagic'' is derived . The pelagic zone can be thought of as an imaginary cylinder or water column between the sur ...

, floating with the currents. This species has a number of predators throughout its life including other snappers,

shark Sharks are a group of elasmobranch cartilaginous fish characterized by a ribless endoskeleton, dermal denticles, five to seven gill slits on each side, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the ...

barracuda A barracuda is a large, predatory, ray-finned, saltwater fish of the genus ''Sphyraena'', the only genus in the family Sphyraenidae, which was named by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. It is found in tropical and subtropical oceans worldw ...

grouper Groupers are a diverse group of marine ray-finned fish in the family Epinephelidae, in the order Perciformes. Groupers were long considered a subfamily of the seabasses in Serranidae, but are now treated as distinct. Not all members of this f ...

s and

moray eel Moray eels, or Muraenidae (), are a family (biology), family of eels whose members are found worldwide. There are approximately 200 species in 15 genera which are almost exclusively Marine (ocean), marine, but several species are regu ...

Fisheries and conservation

The blackfin snapper is considered to be a good fish for eating which is mainly sold at market as fresh fish. It is caught as part of a mixed snapper catch using traps, handlines and longlines. There have been reports of ciguatera poisoning after the consumption of the blackfin snapper. Although it is suspected that some populations may have declined there is almost no statistics on landings or abundance for this species landings. The deeper habitats and resultant specialised fishing equipment required to catch this species offer some protection from overexploitation. As there is not enough information on the population status of this species, the

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status ...

lists it as

Data Deficient A data deficient (DD) species is one which has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as offering insufficient information for a proper assessment of conservation status to be made. This does not necessaril ...

References

External links

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q2143710 blackfin snapper Fish of the Caribbean Fish of the Western Atlantic blackfin snapper Taxa named by Georges Cuvier