Salema porgy (sarpa salpa)

Salema porgy is a species of bream that is relatively common in the subtropical area of Eastern Atlantic (coasts of Northern Africa and Spain) and in the Mediterranean. It is also found in the Indian Ocean, in the coastal waters of South Africa and Mozambique. It is a shoaling fish, which means that it swims in large schools to avoid predators. Its size is 20 to 50 centimetres long.

This is a school of salema porgys that I spotted when I was doing some cave diving near Kalithea in Rhodes. A couple of saddled seabreams swimming in the same school also made the right hand corner of the picture.

Salema porgy is bluish grey in colour with about a dozen narrow golden stripes that run longitudinally along its sides. It has yellow eyes and a distinctive dark spot on the side at the base of the pectoral fin.

Salema porgy is bluish grey in colour with about a dozen narrow golden stripes that run along its sides. It has yellow eyes and a distinctive dark spot on the side at the pectoral fin base.

The salema porgy is actually a hermafrodite species. This means that they can handily change sex from male to female when necessary. You are most likely to run into salemas in coastal areas where the bottom of the sea is rocky. That is where they find the algae that they eat off the bottom.

Salema porgys eating algae off the rocky bottom near Rhodes.

Salema porgy is sometimes referred to as the ”drug fish” or ”dream fish”. In 2006 there was an incident that made the news involving the fish. Two Brittish men had some salema at a Mediterranean restaurant, and apparently the dish caused a terrible hallusinogenic trip to the poor guys. Salema was, in fact, used as a recreational drug in ancient rome. The flesh of the fish should normally be quite edible, though, and a common dish at restaurants in the Mediterranean.

The salema is also called:
Sarpa salpa in Latin
Salema porgy
Bamboo fish in South Africa
Salema
Drug fish
 Dream fish
Salpa in Spanish
Goldstrieme in German
Saupe in French
 Juovapoga in Finnish

Thank you once again for reading this post. Feel free to leave a comment below. All comments are very welcome! And don't forget to take a look at these earlier posts, for example about the leech and moorish idol, or maybe about my dives in  Rhodes.