Gilthead Seabream

The gilt-head bream has a deep body, with a large, deep head which has its relatively small eyes placed high on the head. The diameter of the eyes is shorter than the length of the snout. The cheeks are deep and covered in scales but the preoperculum has no scales, although the operculum is scaled. It has a long-based dorsal fin which is supported by 11 robust spines and 13 or 14 branched soft rays. The anal fin is short based and is held up by three spines and 11 or 12 branched soft rays. It has large and robust teeth in the jaws with four to six large, pointed canine-like teeth in the front the jaws with 2 to 4 rows of blunt, round teeth laterally. It has a blue-grey back, the sides are silvery with a large dark spot behind the eye, it is red along the margin of the operculum and there is a golden bar on the head between the eyes.

The gilt-head bream is found in the northeastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean from Great Britain and Ireland to possibly as far south as Senegal, including the Canary Islands. It is found around Madeira but these are escapes from aquaculture. It also occurs throughout the Mediterranean and in the southern and western parts of the Black Sea.

This species is found over sandy substrates and in seagrass beds at depths between 1 and 150 m (3 ft 3 in and 492 ft 2 in), with adults in deeper waters than juveniles, the young fish typically going no deeper than 30 m (98 ft). It is a euryhaline species that will enter brackish waters.

Gilt-head seabream is an esteemed food fish, but catches of wild fish have been relatively modest, between 6,100 and 9,600 metric tons (6,000 and 9,400 long tons; 6,700 and 10,600 short tons) in 2000–2009, primarily from the Mediterranean.