Critically Endangered
Red steenbras
Petrus rupestris
Red steenbras is a ray-finned fish in the family Sparidae (order Perciformes) — Petrus rupestris, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
The red steenbras has scales on the head that extend past the level of the eyes. The limbs of the gill rakers are both short. The bases of the soft rayed parted of the dorsal and anal fins are densely scaled.
The body is elongate, compressed and moderately elongate and has a depth that first into its standard length 2.5 to 3 times. This is the largest species in the family Sparidae with a maximum total length of 200 cm (79 in), although 100 cm (39 in) is more typical, and a maximum published weight of 80 kg (180 lb).
Range and habitat
The red steenbras is endemic to South Africa where it occurs from Table Bay in the Western Cape to St Lucia, KwaZulu-Natal. It is found at depths between 5 and 150 m (16 and 492 ft), with the adults found on offshore rocky reefs at depths greater than 50 m (160 ft) while the juveniles are found in shallower reefs. This species is endemic to South Africa.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
The species' population has been depleted by overfishing in African waters and it has been classified as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The life history traits shown by this species make it highly vulnerable to overfishing and make the recovery of the population very difficult. Illegal fishing, particularly targeting spawning schools, continues to pose a serious threat to this species and hold back the recovery of its population.
As the red steenbras is a long-lived, slow growing and late maturing species that has been overfished in the past and there has been no indication that the stock has recovered the International Union for Conservation of Nature have classified it as Endangered and state that it almost reaches the threshold of being classified as Critically Endangered, calling for research into the true status of the population and to measure the effectiveness of the moratorium on fishing.
Red steenbras is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Red steenbras, Wikidata item Q5104665. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
