Boops boops, called the bogue, is a species of seabream native to the eastern Atlantic. Its scientific name, and its common names in many languages, refers to its large ("bug") eyes. It is found off the coasts of Europe, Africa, the Azores and the Canary Islands, from Norway to Angola, and in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The species avoids brackish waters such as the Baltic Sea. A demersal and semi-pelagic feeder, it can generally be found down to 100 m, and infrequently down to 350 m. It consumes seaweed, crustaceans, and some plankton, in schools that rise to the surface at night. Individuals can reach 36 cm, but average 20 cm.

Sex determination in Boops boops is unclear. It has variously been described as a rudimentary hermaphrodite, with a few intersex individuals, or a protogynic hermaphrodite, with individuals starting out life as females, and some becoming male later on.
It is commercially fished, with 37,830 t taken in 2008. When cleaned and pan fried, broiled or baked fresh, they are good tasting, but when stored their gut flora soon spread unpleasant flavors to their flesh. Much of the catch is used for fishmeal or tuna fishing bait.

Parasites

Bogue are host to a wide variety of parasites, ranging from metazoans such as Digenea

Digenea

Digenea is a subclass within the Platyhelminthes consisting of parasitic flatworms with a syncytial tegument and, usually, two suckers, one ventral and one oral. Adults are particularly common in the digestive tract, but occur throughout the organ systems of all classes of vertebrates...

n flatworm

Flatworm

The flatworms, known in scientific literature as Platyhelminthes or Plathelminthes are a phylum of relatively simple bilaterian, unsegmented, soft-bodied invertebrate animals...

s, Acanthocephala

Acanthocephala

Acanthocephala is a phylum of parasitic worms known as acanthocephales, thorny-headed worms, or spiny-headed worms, characterized by the presence of an evertable proboscis, armed with spines, which it uses to pierce and hold the gut wall of its host...

n spiny-headed worms, nematode

Nematode

The nematodes or roundworms are the most diverse phylum of pseudocoelomates, and one of the most diverse of all animals. Nematode species are very difficult to distinguish; over 28,000 have been described, of which over 16,000 are parasitic. It has been estimated that the total number of nematode...

 roundworms, isopod and copepod

Copepod

Copepods are a group of small crustaceans found in the sea and nearly every freshwater habitat. Some species are planktonic , some are benthic , and some continental species may live in limno-terrestrial habitats and other wet terrestrial places, such as swamps, under leaf fall in wet forests,...

 crustaceans and Myxozoa

Myxozoa

The Myxozoa are a group of parasitic animals of aquatic environments. Over 1300 species have been described and many have a two-host lifecycle, involving a fish and an annelid worm or bryozoan. The average size of a Myxosporea spore usually ranges from 10 μm to 20 μm and Malacosporea up...

n cnidaria

Cnidaria

Cnidaria is a phylum containing over 9,000 species of animals found exclusively in aquatic and mostly marine environments. Their distinguishing feature is cnidocytes, specialized cells that they use mainly for capturing prey. Their bodies consist of mesoglea, a non-living jelly-like substance,...

ns to the unicellular dinoflagellate Ichthyodinium chabelardi, a parasite that is lethal to eggs developing in ovaries. At least 67 metazoan parasite species have been reported from Boops boops, and their community structures are well studied by scientists. For example, in the aftermath of the 2002 Prestige oil spill

Prestige oil spill

The Prestige oil spill was an oil spill off the coast of Galicia caused by the sinking of an oil tanker in 2002. The spill polluted thousands of kilometers of coastline and more than one thousand beaches on the Spanish, French and Portuguese coast, as well as causing great harm to the local fishing...

the community of parasitic species inhabiting bogue caught off the coast of Spain was found to be noticeably altered.