Who's the Daddy?

I took this photo last week in the Grenadines, southern Carribean of a juvenile fish about 1.5cm in diameter. Can anybody tell me if this is a Cowfish?

A type of Boxfish for sure.

Cow Fish are Yellow I thought when juvenile ...

I would say Trunkfish .. but they are normally inverted colours of your photo i.e. dark body light spots. But could be a variation.

Cool Photo though whatever a real expert says it is ..

I thought 'Boxfish' but have never seen one out there before so thought juvenile Cowfish more likely (or Trunkfish).

Should perhaps have mentioned that I saw this little guy just off the coast whilst snorkelling in about 1.5m of water - not sure if that makes any difference.

And thanks for the compliment, Giles!

Hi,

The juveniles aren't normally patterned like the adults, so I may be wrong, but that spot pattern (almost perfectly round dark dots on a white base) looks a lot like the spotted trunkfish. I saw my first spotted a couple of weeks ago in the Bahamas. I'm used to seeing smooth trunkfish, and even golden smooth trunkfish, but not spotteds, so it was a fun moment for me.

Cheers!

smash

Cowfish, including the juveniles, have two horns which I don't see on your picture. The shape of your one matches that of the smooth trunkfish but as Giles said they have a dark body with yellow/pale spots (see Humann & Deloach, page 392). They don't give a picture or description on the spotted trunkfish juvenile form but at least the adult has a light undercolour with dark spots so I think it's your most likely guess and at least one website photo from the deep see images library seems to support it.

juvenile spotted trunkfish

Bart

I agree with the above, should be a juvenile trunkfish (genus Lactophrys). Hard to tell which species...