The scientific name we use is Lutjanus sp, which means that it is one of several lutjanid species. Foremost amongst these is a group of species that are all known legitimately as the red snapper. Less than a dozen species are targeted on an industrial scale and only three or four are imported into the UK. It’s considered that all snappers make good eating but most species are caught only by artisanal fishermen, only in modest quantities and only sold locally. The same descriptions would apply to the breams we have encountered.) For the record, according to the International Game Fishing Association, the largest snapper on record was a cubera snapper caught in the Mexican Gulf measuring 56kgs and 120cms. They don’t grow too large – 6-8 kgs would be quite a large snapper in our experience. We’d say the half a dozen species we have come across all have quite hard scales, bodies which are relatively deep and relatively thin, and spines in their fins which you would not want to prick a finger on. 27 other species were masquerading as red snapper of which 17 were not snappers at all.īearing in mind the likelihood of getting it wrong, we should confess that if you’re looking for a list of features that distinguish true snappers from all other fish, you won’t find it here. A study there took 120 samples of fish being sold as red snapper. In the UK, we don’t get too worked up about the term red snapper being misapplied but in the USA where the fish is a major restaurant item, the issue is more serious. We stick to that name because it is universally recognised as the commercial name of this species. To scientists, this is a porgy or bream, not a snapper. An example is the fish we sell as the New Zealand Snapper. The word snapper is often applied to fish which look like snappers but which ichthyologists (aka fish scientists) have assigned to other biological groups. Inevitably potential and actual confusions abound.Ĭonfusion and sometimes active deception is also pervasive amongst fishermen and in the wider fish trade (and not only with snappers). Another dozen call the Mexican Gulf home. The eastern Indian Ocean, especially around Indonesia is home to at least 20 species, including many that look similar. This Madagascan fish however is distinct from the common bluestripe snapper found in arc extending from Arabia to well past Indonesia (and overlaps with the bluestriped off northern Madagascar). For instance, the African forktail snapper is only found off the west coast of Africa between Senegal and Namibia and the bluestriped snapper is only found off Madagascar and the opposite East African coast. Admire the emperor and almost all the other snappers on this FishBase page (but we think their picture of the lane snapper doesn’t do it justice). The top prize for sheer gaudiness goes to the emperor red snapper.

Quite a few species have spectacular stripes, sometimes horizontal, sometimes vertical. Yellow and blue are other popular colours in the snapper family.

About 24 species of snappers are red or primarily red, although only half of these get the word red or a hint of it in their names: crimson, ruby, vermillion, scarlet, humpback red, cardinal, emperor red, Pacific red, southern red, northern red, yellowfin red, African red and deep-water red. Yellow? All 3!Īt first sight they seem to be quite a diverse group, at least colourwise. Scientists call this group the lutjanids and the Latin names of over half of them commence with the word Lutjanus.Ĭolour me red.

Perhaps another 20 species have been identified since then. (More species means more records.) The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation listed 103 species in its 1985 publication, Snappers of the World. The International Game Fish Association reckons there are 250 species of snapper, but that may be because it likes to be kind to its members. Over the last 200 years, some 380 species of snapper have been identified and assigned portentous Latin names, but most of these had already been discovered and named by someone else, usually Achille Valenciennes and George Cuvier who, starting in 1828, published the 20 volume Histoire Naturelle des Poissons pinning down 2,000 species of fish including 76 snappers.

Northern red snapper