Northern red snapper

The northern red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) is a marine fish from the snapper family Lutjanidae. It lives in the western Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico, typically around reefs. This fish is both commercially valuable and popular with sport anglers. It is a close relative of the southern red snapper (Lutjanus purpureus), and the two were once thought to be the same species.

Taxonomy

Cuban zoologist Felipe Poey first described the northern red snapper in 1860, naming it Mesoprion campechanus after the Mexican state of Campeche, where the type specimen came from.

Characteristics

The fish has a body shape similar to other snappers—like the mangrove, mutton, lane, and dog snappers—with a sloping profile, medium-to-large scales, a spiny dorsal fin, and a flattened body. Its teeth are short, sharp, and needle-like, but it lacks the prominent upper canines seen in mutton, dog, and mangrove snappers. Northern red snappers are large and red.

They reach maturity at about 39 cm (15 inches) long. Adults commonly grow to 60 cm (24 inches), but can reach 100 cm (39 inches). The heaviest recorded individual weighed 50 pounds 4 ounces (22.79 kg), and the oldest known lived over 57 years.

Their color is light red, darker on the back. They have 10 dorsal spines, 14 soft dorsal rays, three anal spines, and eight to nine soft anal rays. Juveniles under 30–35 cm often have a dark spot on their side below the front soft dorsal rays, which disappears as they age.

Distribution

Northern red snappers are found from 30 to 620 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and along the southeastern Atlantic coast of Mexico and the United States, and much less commonly as far north as Massachusetts. In Latin American Spanish, they are called mero, huachinango, pargo, or chillo. They usually live in waters 9–60 meters (30–200 feet) deep, but can occasionally be caught at 90 meters (300 feet). They stay near the bottom, favoring rocky areas, ledges, ridges, and artificial reefs like oil rigs and shipwrecks.

Like most snappers, they are social and form large schools of similarly sized fish around wrecks and reefs. Their preferred habitat changes as they grow: newly hatched fish spread over open bottom areas, then move to low-relief spots like oyster beds. Around one year old, they shift to intermediate-relief habitats as older fish move to high-relief reefs.