Epinephelus caninus (Valenciennes, 1843)

González-Lorenzo, J. Gustavo, González-Jiménez, José F. & González, José A., 2021, Review of the family Serranidae (Perciformes) from the Canary Islands (eastern-central Atlantic), with the first records of Serranus hepatus and Epinephelus aeneus, Cybium 45 (2), pp. 141-154 : 146

Epinephelus caninus (Valenciennes, 1843)

– Dogtooth grouper

Serranus caninus : Valenciennes, 1843: 10 (type description) (C); Steindachner, 1865: 404 (T); Vinciguerra, 1893: 304 (T).

Epinephelus caninus : Cadenat, 1935: 398-399 (C); Dooley et al., 1985: 16 (C); Pizarro, 1985: 171 (F); Brito, 1991: 103 (F); Franquet and Brito, 1995: 66 (C); Brito et al., 2002: 216, 230-231 (F, L); Báez et al., 2019: suppl. tab. (C); Freitas et al., 2019: suppl. tab. S3 (C).

An eastern Atlantic warm-temperate species, distributed along the Mediterranean Sea and, in the eastern Atlantic, from off Portugal and along the west coast of Africa from Morocco ( Collignon, 1973 – rare) and Western Sahara ( Cadenat, 1935 – frequent) to Angola, including the Mediterranean ( Craig et al., 2011) and Canary Islands; not known from the Cabo Verde Islands ( Heemstra and Anderson, 2016; Freitas et al., 2019; Froese and Pauly, 2020).

It is a very rare species in waters of the Canaries, and findings on the coasts (between 50 and 200 m depth) of the two easternmost islands – Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, the islands closest to the African continent – are possibly based on large vagrant individuals ( Brito et al., 2002). It was originally described by Valenciennes in the Canaries in 1843 based on type material probably caught off the north-western African coast ( Brito et al., 2002), and newly recorded in June 1978 based on two specimens from the western coast (off Ajuy) of Fuerteventura ( Brito, 1991) and on three subsequent findings (data unknown) at Lanzarote ( Brito et al., 2002). In the last two decades, a few large specimens have been sporadically caught off these islands (first author’s personal observation). Reported maximum size: up to 164 cm total length and 57 kg ( Morales-Nin et al., 2005), but attains at least 1.8 m and 75 kg ( Heemstra and Anderson, 2016), and a maximum weight of 78 kg was reported from Spain ( Francour and Pollard, 2018). Spanish vernacular names: cherne moruno; cherne de ley.