The study of coral reef biodiversity has in some ways become a competition to see who can go deeper. In the 1970’s, it was Jack Randall diving to 40+ meters in the Red Sea to collect Cirrhilabrus blatteus.…
Joe Rowlett
Recent Content
Dark As A Moonless Night, The Hypermelanistic Achilles Tang
The Achilles Tang (Acanthurus achilles) has to be one of the most visually iconic species in the Central Pacific. With its dark body and restrained use of orange and white, it is a masterclass in minimalist design, eschewing the garish neon hues so prevalent among reef fishes in favor of a subdued elegance.…
The Purple Paratrimma Of The Unfortunate Islands
Chile isn’t a nation that normally enters into the conversation when discussing coral reef fishes, but, thanks to a few remote islands in its possession, the country is home to an unusually fascinating marine fauna.…
Data on Survival Rates for Selected Starfish and Hermits
The supply chain necessary to get an organism from a remote Pacific reef to your aquarium is long and convoluted and, by design, rather opaque to the end consumer. The sad reality is that many of the individuals plucked from the ocean, be it fish or coral or invertebrate, will never live to see the end of this journey.…
What Is The Saint-Marie Anemonefish?
The concept of a “species” is fundamental to our understanding of the world around us, but it’s a surprisingly indefinable quality when applied to the myriad life on our planet—the zoological equivalent of quantum mechanics.…
AMAZING Video Of Australia’s Mesophotic Reef Fishes
The mesophotic coral ecosystems along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have been revealing some exciting discoveries in recent years. Thanks primarily to the efforts of aquarium collectors like Cairns Marine, there have been several species found which proved to be new to science—Bodianus bennetti, Plectranthias bennetti, Cirrhilabrus squirei.…
A (Not So) New Species Of Caribbean Damselfish
During a 2013 survey of coral reef fishes near Veracruz, Mexico, researchers noted the presence of a small, shoaling fish that had never before been seen in the area. This would mark the first time that anyone had taken notice of an insidious new invader to the Caribbean, the Regal Damoiselle (Neopomacentrus cyanomos).…
“Menephorus”, A Rarely Seen Caribbean Fish
The strange fish seen in this photograph was recently spotted by California Academy of Sciences ichthyologist Dr. Luiz Rocha on an expedition to the remote Trindade Island, part of a tiny archipelago that sits roughly 700 miles east of Brazil.…
Reef Fishes Named In Aquarium Magazines
Tropical Fish Hobbyist (TFH) and the recently defunct Freshwater and Marine Aquarium (FAMA) were the leading aquarium publications during the latter half of the twentieth century, and, throughout their rich history, a surprising number of species descriptions appeared within their pages.…
Smurf Polyps, An Enigmatic Blue Soft Coral
This sensational chunk of soft coral was happened upon by aquarist David Jones at the UK’s Maidenhead Aquatics, where it was found as a very colorful hitchhiker alongside another species of coral.…