Dicentrarchus is a genus of ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Moronidae, the temperate basses.

Dicentrarchus was first proposed as a monospecific genus in 1860 by the American ichthyologist Theodore Gill with Perca elongata, which had been described in 1817 by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire from the Mediterranean Sea of Egypt,[2] designated as its type species.

In fact, both species have three spines in their anal fins and Gill admitted he did not actually examine a specimen.

[6] The largest of these fishes is the European seabass which has a maximum published total length of 103 cm (41 in).

[5] Dicentrarchus seabasses are coastal fishes found in the eastern Atlantic, from Norway south to Senegal, and the Mediterranean.