Unknown Fish from GBR Australia

Having trouble ID ing the following fish. The last pics of the grouper are the same fish, first hiding in a hole and the second swimming away. The Yellow fin margins have me stumped.

The first are female Yamashiro's wrasse (Pseudocoris yamashiroi). Found from the Maldives to Micronesia and up to SW Japan.

The second is also a female wrasse; Bluntheaded wrasse (Thalassoma amblycephalus). East Africa coast to the Line Islands.

The third one I would put down as a double-spot wrasse (Oxycheilinus bimaculatus). You showed an image of this earlier but it is very variable in colour. Perhaps regional variants (?) as it occurs from the East African coast all the way to Hawaii. I wouldn't be surprised if DNA research would indicate multiple lineages, or species, are hidden inside this complex of colour variants.

I haven't seen a grouper with such yellow fin margins. Do you remember if the tail had a truncate or rounded shape? If rounded then it reminds me of the highfin grouper (Epinephelus maculatus) but I haven't seen it with yellow fin margins and the ones I've seen always have prominent white saddles at the start and end of the spiny part of the dorsal fin (first half). With a bit of wishful thinking you can see a fainter body colour in your fish where the second saddle should be. Perhaps there is a sister species in the central pacific with your colour pattern. Actually, a fishbase image for this species from the Marshall Islands has some yellow in caudal and posterior part of the dorsal fin.

http://fishbase.sinica.edu.tw/images/species/epmac_u1.jpg

Bart

First thanks a bunch again.

Second how do you know all this stuff?

On the first picture of Pseudocoris yamashiroi, it is covered in 3 of my four reference books of this area in the world. In only 1 would I have had a chance to ID this fish, and it would have been a slim chance.

On the Grouper, I did see Epinephelus maculatus, both Juvenile and adult, but don't seem nearly as elongate as my fish pictured. Although the fish from fishbase is. I also saw Epinephelus macrospilos which has a lot of Yellow, but totaly different Caudal fins. Maybe there is some hybridation going on? I'm going to try to attach my photos of maculatus below.

Seeing your typical highfin grouper in the second post having both the white saddles and yellow fin margin makes me more confident that the one in the first post is indeed a highfin grouper.

There are several reasons I "know this stuff". Most important is probably that I'm a self-identified fish geek and have been since early childhood. Another is Reef Fishes of the East Indies, a somewhat pricey but priceless three-volume set of books with virtually all known reef fish in the coral triangle and areas west up to and including the Andaman Islands of Thailand. I've also found it to be very accurate unlike many other ID books. Another good, though certainly not error-free or complete resource is fishbase.

Unfortunately I only get to make one dive trip per year, but if I go I tend to make a lot of "slow dives", preferably solo or, better, with a like-minded buddy rather than a group and dive master. On one occasion I made 50 dives on the same house reef in a 3 week trip. I love that because you get a lot of time to really look at all the fish, get a feeling for their behaviours, habitat preferences and subtle differences with time of day, mood, developmental stage, or just intrinsic variability. If you look at them in detail you also get a sense of what aspects tend to be conserved within species and which are variable. That even helps when identifying fish you have never seen before, such as the Pseudocoris yamashiroi.

Finally, I am working on a website to help myself and others in learning about identification, distribution, typical habitat and behaviour. That means I have spend a lot of time looking through all my images. The framework is almost finished and then I will start adding more species. You can have a sneak preview here

http://biodives.com/World/Red_Sea/Marsa_Alam/Marsa_Abu_Dabbab/

When it is ready for prime time I'll announce it here on wetpixel.

Bart

Hi Bart,

I first started diving when I was 15, then I moved away from the ocean and got a job and bought a house and all that and didn't dive for 35 years. When I was a kid I used to look at all the dive magazines and think "I'll never be able to do that". Now I'm retired and in my 60's and I'm trying to go to all those places before I can't any more. I do have Reef Fishes of the East Indies but apparently haven't mastered using it yet.

I live in Florida in the winter and started diving the Blue Heron Bridge a few years ago. It is a shallow muck dive so normally you can get in 2 hours. I got in trouble on a night dive because you are supposed to leave the park by 10 pm, but didn't get out of the water for 2 hrs and 45 min. because I wasn't paying attention to time. I think it was my 24th dive that I didn't see a new fish. Twice I thought to myself that I hadn't seen a new one and as I went to get out of the water, there was a new one. Sometimes I saw 6 new fish. If you ever get to South Florida give me a call.

Looking forward to your website

Thanks again,

Craig

Where are you guys when I'm looking for dive buddies??

I prefer diving the same relatively shallow site again and again, going slower each time and trying to see more. My companions are saying - we just did the House Reef... I'm saying - how much of it do you really think you saw?

I'm very excited for your web site Bart and if you need any help or beta testers, let me know. You have been by far the most helpful of anyone on the various ID help sites I've tried.

And I love the BHB Craig - I've only been able to dive it 7 times so far, but I'm planning on going again in November.

Hi Craig,

BHB has been on my wishlist but more for a combination trip if I happened to be in the region. You just gave me another reason to find a way to make it happen. I'd also like to see the different fish along the US Eastern shores as I've only been further south in the Caribbean. I started diving at 18 in lakes and North Sea until graduate studies put it on pause for 13 years. Have been diving every year since but am too far from an ocean to make short trips.

Brian - thanks for your kind words and being a fellow slow-diver. I've been having a few select people check out the website and it is getting closer to being ready for adding more species. But I still need to occasionally make structural changes and that is easier with smaller numbers of dive sites and species. For instance on my private server the species pages now have their distribution plotted on a map and that should go live later this week. If you have any feedback on content or the site layout in general then send me a personal message via wetpixel and we can exchange email addresses.

Bart

Where are you guys when I'm looking for dive buddies??

 

I prefer diving the same relatively shallow site again and again, going slower each time and trying to see more. My companions are saying - we just did the House Reef... I'm saying - how much of it do you really think you saw?

 

I'm very excited for your web site Bart and if you need any help or beta testers, let me know. You have been by far the most helpful of anyone on the various ID help sites I've tried.

 

And I love the BHB Craig - I've only been able to dive it 7 times so far, but I'm planning on going again in November.

Well I'm always ready to go dive the bridge, get ahold of me when you get around. I'll be in the Turks and Caicos from the 7th to the 14th though.

Craig