The California sheephead (Semicossyphus pulcher) is a wrasse

Wrasse

The wrasses are a family, Labridae, of marine fish, many of which are brightly colored. The family is large and diverse, with over 600 species in 82 genera, which are divided into nine subgroups or tribes....

 native to the eastern Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

. Its range is from Monterey Bay

Monterey Bay

Monterey Bay is a bay of the Pacific Ocean, along the central coast of California. The bay is south of San Francisco and San Jose, between the cities of Santa Cruz and Monterey....

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 to the Gulf of California

Gulf of California

The Gulf of California is a body of water that separates the Baja California Peninsula from the Mexican mainland...

, Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

.

Description

The sheephead can reach a size of 91 cm and a weight of 16 kg. The male is black with a white jaw and a broad red band spanning the body sometimes. The female is pink. The juvenile form is bright red with a white stripe spanning the body and a black spot on its tail. All sheepheads are born as females and eventually change to males at 18 inches. The age of the transition depends on environmental factors such as food supply.

Biology

The sheephead lives in kelp forests and rocky reefs, where it feeds on sea urchins, mollusks, lobsters, and crabs. Giving birth results in planktonic larva.

Fishery

In Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, the fish is marketed under its common name "vieja" (old lady), or "vieja de California".