Tag Archives: Surgeonfish

Yesterday’s swim

A small shoal of convict tang feeding.
I think this is a spotted coral blenny on a head of purple cauliflower coral, and possibly a small trumpetfish.

This is a second response to this week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme of ‘Waterworld.’ (See more responses here.) Yesterday, I posted about the movie Waterworld. Today, it’s a probably more expected response.

These are photos I took during my swim yesterday. Visibility in the water was patchy with some good areas and some not so good. I didn’t see anything startling, though the mackerel shads aren’t a common sight. Last time I saw such a shoal there was a great barracuda lurking on the other side. I looked around and, sure enough, there was another one looking interested as it cruised low down, too low for a decent photo.

The other oddity was in the photo at left. I saw what I think is a spotted coral blenny on this patch of cauliflower coral, and snapped a quick photo before it took off. But it was only when I processed the photos that I saw something else, to the left and slightly below the blenny. I think it’s a small trumpetfish, but it could be something else. A lot of small fish and other creatures hide in coral heads so I must pay more attention from here on.

In short, it was a fairly typical swim.

A shoal of mackerel scad on the left with yellow tang on the right.
Little fish enjoy the comparative safety of the shallow water in the surge zone.
On the left, a fourspot butterflyfish and a cushion star. On the right, black triggerfish are cleaned by a Hawaiian cleaner wrasse.
Just before getting out I saw this small Pacific trumpetfish with goldring surgeonfishes.

Orangeband surgeonfish shoal

This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Re-imagine Orange.’ See more responses here.

A shoal of orangeband surgeonfish is fun to see with their orange bands making them easy to identify and follow. For the purpose of this challenge, I took the photo below, desaturated the other colors, then boosted the orange to emphasize their defining feature. These changes virtually eliminated the other fish, particularly the yellow tang which went from bright focal points to almost invisible.

Trumpetfish and yellow tangs

This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Sea Creatures.’ See more responses here.

I go snorkeling two or three times a week and feel fortunate to see a great variety of sea creatures while I’m out. Some of these can be quite unusual or exotic. I recently saw my first titan scorpionfish, and threadfin jack juveniles are weird and wonderful. And then there was my one and only encounter with a pyrosoma.

But for this challenge, I’ve opted to go with some fish I see most times I get in the water. Yellow tangs are probably the most noticeable reef fish around. Bright yellow, they putter around in the shallows, and are easily visible in the water and from shore. Trumpetfish look nothing like yellow tang, but often take on a yellow color and blend in with shoals of yellow tang in the hopes of surprising small fish, which are their main prey.

In these photos, a trumpetfish is doing just that. While it might seem like it would be pretty obvious that the long trumpetfish is quite different from the rest of the shoal, when seen from the front, which is the business end of the trumpetfish, the distinction isn’t so great. And if the trumpetfish can get close enough, it will suck its prey in and devour it.

Cleaner wrasse and whitebar surgeonfish

A cleaner wrasse performs its service on a whitebar surgeonfish. Cleaner wrasse establish stations where other fish can visit to be cleaned of mucus and parasites.

When I’m snorkeling, I enjoy visiting these stations to see what’s going on and which fish are availing themselves of the services offered. Some of these fish are predators who, in other circumstances, might be expected to make a meal of a cleaner wrasse. But because of the beneficial service they offer, cleaner wrasse get a free pass with predators.

Goldring surgeonfish

This goldring surgeonfish is so named because of the colorful ring around its eyes. This one came up to take a look at me. I like how it looks like it’s casting a giant shadow, but that’s actually a different fish (another goldring surgeonfish I think) passing behind it.