The blotched picarel has quite an elongated profile with a single dorsal fin and a forked caudal fin. It has a blue-grey or greenish-grey back and silvery sides sometimes scattered with small black spots. This genus has a distinctive rectangular black blotch on either side, and blue and yellow lines and dots appear during spawning periods. These fish can be up to 25 cm long and live mainly in Posidonia seagrass meadows and on sandy bottoms down to 100m below the surface. They are found in the Atlantic from Portugal to Morocco and all over the Mediterranean but very rarely in the Black Sea.
Phylum: Vertebrates
Class: Osteichthyes
Order: Perciformes
Family: Centracanthidae
Scientific name: Spicara maena
French: Mendole or Picarel
Spanish: Chucla
Italian: Menola
German: Laxierfisch