Lesions on surgeonfish

Diving today I noticed that several, but not all of the surgeonfish on one dive site had lesions on their bodies. Any ideas on the cause?

None of the other fish seemed to have these marks - and I haven't noticed yet it at any other dive sites.

The pictures aren't the best because I was shooting rear curtain synch fish shots for most of the dive.

Alex

IF I see more I will take some clearer photos. Alex

The close-up reminds me of scars I have seen left by parasitic copepods - guilty party still present. No wonder cleaning stations are so popular. Good luck finding some better shots, you may need to use longer focal lengths.

Tom

Parasite scars was also my first guess, but I don't remember ever seeing a surgeonfish with attached copepod parasites. That's really weird.

Alex we have fish like that on Cheeseburger reef .. we had assumed hurricane damage from being thrown around into the coral.

I don't know anyone that knows for sure.

I would have said that is quite a bit of scar tissue for parasite from the normal stuff I see in Cayman. But we definately have not only Tang but also Bermuda Chubs with damage like this on cheeseburger.

I'm no expert and dopn't have any piccies but maybe the fact that it is elsewhere helps.

PS it's not all the fish it is just about 1 in 10 and all on cheeseburger not at the Cali or the shallower patch reef.

I should add that my observations have been in rather northern waters. Copepods are quite common on salmon. Nevertheless, I recall seeing them also in published pix, esp. on dorsal fins of sharks, from lower latitudes. Lamprey scars look a bit like that too.

Tom

My first thougts were the same as Tom's that they look like parasite or lamprey scars. There do seem to be more parasitic cymothoid isopods about at the moment. I have seen the on Soldierfish, yellow stingray, cardinalfish and graysby already this week. But none of the affected surgeonfish had anything attached to them - making me think that it was an internal infection.

I don't think that they are physical injuries from the hurricane because they are all too similar in size and I didn't notice them in January.

Alex