''Sparodon'', commonly known as the white musselcracker, musselcracker seabream, mussel cracker seabream, brusher, or cracker. is a monotypic genus of fish in the family

Sparidae The Sparidae are a family of fish in the order Perciformes, commonly called sea breams and porgies. The sheepshead, scup, and red seabream are species in this family. Most sparids are deep-bodied compressed fish with a small mouth separated by a ...

. The type and only known species, ''Sparodon durbanensis'', was first described and named by François Louis Nompar de Caumont de Laporte, comte de Castelnau, in 1861. The fish is edible and is an important food source in southern Africa.

Description

''S. durbanensis'' can grow up to a length of 120 centimeters, and a weight of around 22 kilograms. Its head and body are colored silver or gray. It has darker colored fins and a white belly. It has large teeth and has strongly developed jaws, allowing it to eat its prey easier.

Behavior

''S. durbanensis'' mostly stays in shallow

reefs A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes— deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock o ...

as a juvenile, in depths no greater than 12 m. Some adult specimens are thought to migrate northeasterly seasonally. The average length of time between two generations, called the

generation time In population biology and demography, generation time is the average time between two consecutive generations in the lineages of a population. In human populations, generation time typically ranges from 22 to 33 years. Historians sometimes use this ...

, is 13 years for the species. Young typically spawn from August to January. They can live to be around 31 years old. The species reaches 50% maturity when it is around years old. ''S, durbanensis'' eats a variety of

invertebrates Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

commonly known as

shellfish Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater env ...

, including

sea urchins Sea urchins () are spiny, globular echinoderms in the class Echinoidea. About 950 species of sea urchin live on the seabed of every ocean and inhabit every depth zone from the intertidal seashore down to . The spherical, hard shells (tests) of ...

crustaceans Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean gr ...

gastropods The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. ...

, and bristle worms. In addition to this, it has also been known to eat Eukaryotes in the

Chlorophyta Chlorophyta or Prasinophyta is a taxon of green algae informally called chlorophytes. The name is used in two very different senses, so care is needed to determine the use by a particular author. In older classification systems, it refers to a ...

division, a group of

green algae The green algae (singular: green alga) are a group consisting of the Prasinodermophyta and its unnamed sister which contains the Chlorophyta and Charophyta/ Streptophyta. The land plants ( Embryophytes) have emerged deep in the Charophyte alg ...

Distribution and conservation

''S. durbanensis'' is found in the South-east Atlantic Ocean. It mostly inhabits

Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number ...

, and has not been recorded further north than the

KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN and known as "the garden province") is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu) and Natal Province were merged. It is loca ...

province. It lives in shallow coastal tropical waters, in depths of up to 80 meters. The population of ''S. durbanensis'' is currently declining. It is listed as "Near Threatened" by IUCN. There are currently several conservation actions taking place, most notability one which limits people to two fish per day.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3450041 Edible fish Species described in 1861 Near threatened biota of Africa Near threatened animals Fish of South Africa Fish of Mozambique Sparidae Monotypic fish genera