Gilt-head

To give another instance: upon examining the fins of a fish to me unknown, I find them prickly; I then look for the situation of the ventral fins, I find them entirely wanting; this then must be a prickly-finned apodal fish. Of this kind there are but three; and, by comparing the fish with the description, I find it either of the trichurus kind, the sword-fish, or the gilt-head.

The common gilt-head (C. aurata) is the one best known. It is exceedingly abundant in the Mediterranean, and not rare on the west coast of Spain, Portugal, and France.

An underwater hunter spots gilt-heads under twenty, twenty-five or even thirty feet of water.