Sipadan — Rare Parrotfish Encounter
FiNS Magazine Associate Editors Andrea and Antonella Ferrari had an incredibly lucky trip to Kapalai and Sipadan recently, finding and identifying quite a few rare fish species, including an unusual parrotfish. Here’s their report:
It seems that luck has been on our side recently. During our latest trip to sunny Sabah, not only were we able to photograph the rather uncommon and beautiful blackfoot lionfish (Parapterois heterura), but we also had the chance to see and document another interesting and uncommon fish — the bucktooth or stareye parrotfish.
To be honest, this fish puzzled us from the moment we saw it feeding on coral rubble at the end of Sipadan’s celebrated Barracuda Point. It had escaped the attention of both our veteran guide Rodel Pepania from Sipadan-Kapalai Dive Resort and our dive buddy of the day (and also a regular FiNS contributor) Dr. Alexander Mustard.
The fish caught our eye as it busily overturned bits of coral and broken shell on the sand, obviously looking for some tasty invertebrate morsel. Having just finished working on our latest fish ID book A Diver’s Guide to Reef Life, we immediately realised (to our unmitigated horror!) that not only was the fish not in our new book, but we had never seen it before!
Putting aside our frustration, we keenly followed it along its culinary wanderings, clicking away and watching in disbelief as it rapidly changed the intensity of its colours, clearly displeased and a bit worried about being the object of so much interest.
Observing the unusual fish through our viewfinders, our doubts about the identity of the fish increased. What exactly was this strange and chunky fish? The robust body shape, and especially the general colouration — a dull jade-green with bright pink vermiculations, exceptionally sharp and intense on the head — suggested it was a parrotfish. Size also — it was about a foot in length — supported this first impression.
But the clearly visibile, jutting front teeth being used to move around bits of coral and broken shells strongly suggested it might be a tuskfish or wrasse!
So, a toothy parrotfish which looked like a fat or overweight wrasse mimicking a buck-toothed parrotfish? A one-off strange critter born out of occasional interbreeding? Very puzzling, but not particularly surprising, as we’ve grown accustomed to happening upon new, strange species along the biologically rich coasts of Sabah.
Our pictures came out clearly enough to enable us to investigate properly later. As it turns out, our colour-shifting subject was an aptly named bucktooth parrotfish (Calotomus carolinus), a rare ancestral parrotfish exhibiting characteristics typical of the Labrid (wrasse) family, occasionally encountered on subtidal reef flats on seaward reefs.
The fish feeds on encrusting or leafy algae, which explains its wrasse-like behavior. So next time you’re underwater, keep your eyes open. If you see a strange, toothy parrotfish pretending to be a wrasse (or was that the opposite?), forget nitrogen narcosis or that one-beer-too-many you had the evening before — it’s our funny friend the bucktooth parrotfish!