Areas to the east and west of Bermuda will be closed to fishing as hundreds of black groupers are gathering there, possibly to spawn.

The Marine Resource Section of the Department of Environmental Protection said it had recorded numbers of black groupers in a site to the north-east of the Island for the last two years.

This June, it started getting reports of similar sized gatherings of black groupers in a site to the south-west of the Island.

A spokesman for the department said: "Preliminary observations confirm that the site has many characteristics similar to those of a north-western aggregation site, which the section has been studying for the past two years.

"Black groupers were found at the south-western site in large numbers, hundreds of fish, at the expected time, between the full and new moons.

"This suggests that the site is indeed a spawning aggregation site."

In addition to the black grouper, a number of Nassau groupers, a protected species, were also found in the area. It is not known if the species is using the site for reproduction.

Because the fish are likely to remain in the areas until November, fishing in both sites is banned until November 29.

During that time, the Marine resource Section will continue to study both the black and Nassau groupers in the area.