TIP: Fish Identification!

A curious and wondrous thing about many tropicals is the rather dramatic colour shifts they can undergo. At the bottom of this photo (taken in "Brent's lagoon") is a beautiful black and yellow striped juvenile French Angelfish. At it's intermediate stage it will look more like this, and then as an adult will look like this. If, however, its tail had a square cut margin and ever so slightly different striping, it would mature into this. And in fact, they can appear almost dusky rose, too ...



The sergeant majors in this snapshot are not in blue phase, as their bright yellow is still quite evident — males become dark blue to purple except for their black bands when courting or defending their nests.



Here's a nice blue tang that is shifting from its juvenile bright yellow coloration to blue. Tangs also adjust the vividness of their blues from powder blue to purple.



If you look up bar jacks in keys you will find them listed under silvery fishes. But apparently when they are an attendant fish with a Southern Stingray they are most often in black phase. I thoroughly enjoyed spending some time with this pair yesterday morning! The Southern Stingrays vary in colour from brown to gray and black.





And then there are those who depend on subterfuge instead of just floundering about!



All images should be clickable for closer looks!