Appearance and lifestyle:
The carpenter is a small, elongated sea bream with a silver-pink body and faint, pale blue spots arranged in several horizontal bands along its sides.
Habitat:
The carpenter is endemic to rocks reefs on the South African coast from Cape Point to Margate and migrates to the Agulhas bank to spawn. Most adults are resident to a preferred area, but a small portion of carpenters disperse widely.
Diet:
It is a predator, with pronounced canines that it uses to prey on sardines, anchovies and squid. As a juvenile it feeds primarily on crabs, amphipods and polychaetes.
Threats:
Due to historic overfishing, the carpenter saw a significant decline in its population until limitations were placed on its commercial fishery in 2003. Since then, wild populations are slowly recovering.