ABSTRACT
Mugilidae is a widely distributed family and its species occur mainly in coastal marine and brackish waters in all tropical and temperate seas (Thomson 1966). They are usually euryhaline fi sh and are more commonly found in coastal waters and lagoons than in freshwaters; some of them seem capable of spending a great part of their life in fresh or brackish water, others only for a few months each year (Quignard and Farrugio 1981), while juvenile mullets have been found to tolerate up to 78 psu for short periods (Trape et al. 2009). According to Blaber (1987), grey mullets maximize their tenement in estuaries and freshwater in order to take advantage of the rich resources and the shelter from predators provided therein. As Blaber (1987) noted, these two advantages are the reason why the marine phase is short and is mostly related to the larval stage and spawning period. The high abundance of mullets globally, and the high biomass that these species can attain are due to the aforementioned characteristics along with their foraging at the fi rst level of the food web (Whitfi eld et al. 2012). At the same time, they are also a signifi cant food source for higher trophic level piscivores (McDonough and Wenner 2003).
