Good morning friends, I have a goatfish for you today that really glows under blue-light and stands out on the reef at night like a sore thumb! When we went to Tugboat,we found these guys and Lizardfish all over the sand, some were buried while others were swimming around apparently looking for food. I still have no idea why some fish are so fluorescent while others have no apparent reaction to the blue-lights at all but as you can see these goatfish are spectacular!

Goatfishes are characterized by a pair of chin barbels, which contain chemosensory organs and are used to probe the sand or holes in the reef for food. Their bodies are deep and elongated, with forked tails and widely separated dorsal fins. The first dorsal fin has 6-8 spines; the second dorsal has one spine and 8-9 soft rays, shorter than the anal fin. Spines in the anal fin (1 or 2), have 5-8 soft rays. They have 22 vertebrae. Many goatfishes are brightly colored. The largest species, the dash-and-dot goatfish (Parupeneus barberinus), grows to 60 cm in length; most species are less than half this size. Within the family are six genera and about eighty-six species.  MORE