Fish
Mullet
Mugilidae · also called grey mullet
A mullet is the fish that grazes mud like a cow grazes grass, using a muscular, gizzard-like stomach to grind up algae and sediment, then punctuates its otherwise unremarkable life by leaping clear out of the water for reasons nobody has fully pinned down. It has also, somewhat improbably, lent its name to a haircut.
Overview
Mullet are the family Mugilidae, around 80 species of schooling coastal fish found worldwide except Antarctica. They graze algae and organic matter off mud, sand, and rock, and tolerate an unusually wide range of salinity, moving freely between the open sea, brackish estuaries, and even fully fresh water far up rivers.
The jump, and the haircut
Mullet are famous for repeated leaps clear of the surface — variously explained as predator evasion, parasite removal, gulping air, or social signalling, with no single cause confirmed. The mullet haircut, short at the sides and long at the back, borrows the fish’s name for its shape.
Food since antiquity
Grey mullet have been fished and farmed for thousands of years around the Mediterranean and Asia, prized for their flesh and for bottarga — salted, pressed, dried roe eaten as a delicacy, paralleled by Japan’s karasumi.
Status
Least Concern — abundant and tolerant of a huge range of coastal conditions, supporting major commercial fisheries and aquaculture worldwide, with no broad conservation concern.
Mullet: common questions
Why do mullet jump out of the water?
Several explanations have been proposed and none is fully settled as the single cause, so the behaviour likely reflects a mix of reasons depending on the situation. Jumping may help a mullet escape a pursuing predator by breaking the surface unpredictably, may dislodge external parasites or loose scales, may let the fish gulp a breath of air to supplement oxygen uptake in poor-quality water, or may serve some social or communicative function within a school. Because mullet jump both when apparently undisturbed and when clearly fleeing danger, researchers suspect more than one of these explanations is likely true at different times.
Is the mullet haircut really named after the fish?
Yes, the hairstyle, short at the front and sides with hair left longer at the back, is generally understood to be named for its resemblance to the shape of a mullet fish, which has a relatively short, compact body with hair-like fin extensions or a longer tail trailing behind in some depictions, though the exact reasoning behind the comparison is somewhat informal and folk in origin rather than based on a precise anatomical match. The name and hairstyle became widely popularised and firmly associated with each other in the later 20th century.
Can mullet live in both salt water and fresh water?
Yes, mullet are unusually tolerant of a wide range of salinity levels compared with most fish, and many species move freely between fully marine coastal waters, brackish estuaries and lagoons, and, in a good number of cases, well up rivers into completely fresh water. This flexibility, technically called euryhalinity, lets mullet exploit a much broader range of coastal and inland habitats than many other fish restricted to a narrower salinity range, and it is part of why mullet are found in such a wide variety of coastal environments worldwide.
What is bottarga, and does it come from mullet?
Bottarga is a delicacy made from the roe, or egg mass, of grey mullet, which is removed intact, salted, pressed, and air-dried until firm, then typically grated or thinly sliced over pasta or other dishes, primarily in Mediterranean cuisines such as Italian, Sardinian, and Sicilian cooking, though similar cured fish roe products, such as karasumi in Japan, are made using the same basic method in other culinary traditions. The dried roe has a strong, distinctive, briny flavour and has been considered a prized and relatively expensive delicacy for a very long time given the labour involved in its preparation.