Bass, Groupers and the Tilefish

Surveying the wide variety of the fish exhibited in these next sixty or so pages, the reader may wonder what ‘perch-like’ means. The answer is that the fish of this order all have some spiny fins. Some of the leading rays of the dorsal and anal fins are always thickened and unjointed, and are in most instances sharp. The pelvic fins usually have one spiny ray each and are well forward on the body, beneath the pectoral fins. The pectoral fins themselves are high up on the body; whereas the more primitive fish in other orders have low-slung pectorals.