Search
Panga Fish
The panga (Pterogymnus laniarius) is pink with horizontal stripes made up of small blue spots on its sides. It has a prominent mouth with fleshy lips and large canines. These canines help it to prey on small crustaceans, squid and other small fish. Small hairs on its lips allow it to feed over soft sediment without swallowing any. It inhabits rocky reefs and sandy bottomed shores along the coast of southern Namibia and South Africa.
Carpenter
The carpenter is a small, elongated sea bream with a silver-pink body and faint, pale blue spots arranged in several horizontal bands along its sides.
Frogfish
Frogfish are so named because their bodies and fins are covered with wart-like bumps.
Dusky rubberlips
Dusky rubberlips are oblong fish with pale grey-brown bodies that are darker on top. They have thick lips that become fleshier with age.
Shortspine porcupinefish
Shortspined porcupinefish resemble a stereotypical "puffer fish" that most people can visualise - they have compact, boxy bodies, covered in scales that have been modified into short spines that can stand erect when the porcupinefish inflate their bodies and point backward at other times.
Knobbly anemone
Knobbly anemones are visually very variable. They can be white, maroon, pink, red, blue, purple or orange.
Basket star
Basket stars are brittle stars, close relatives of starfish you might be more familiar with.They have ten arms which each branch multiple times into progressively finer and more delicate tendrils. They are typically a dull blue-grey with dark stripes on their arms and small, black-ringed knobs on their central disc. They can grow very large, reaching over half a metre across.Basket stars typically anchor their central disc onto sea fans or other tall corals situated high up in reefs, and hold their arms outstretched to catch passing prey. The fine tendrils on their arms can interlock, forming a basket-like trap.When not feeding, basket stars can pull their tendrils and arms towards their central disk for protection.They are found only on the South African coast, from the Cape Peninsula to Algoa Bay.Oval urchin
This urchin appears oval rather than circular when viewed from above. Its body is purple-black, and its long spines range from purple to green, sometimes having white tips.
Clarke's clownfish
Clarke's clownfish are small, orange-black fish with three distinct vertical stripes - one separating the head from the gill cover, one across the fish's posterior, behind their first dorsal fin and one on the peduncle, separating the dark body from the yellow tail. Their snouts are usually orange or pink.These colours vary regionally - in fact, Clarke's clownfish have the greatest colour variation of any clownfish species. For example, ones inhabiting dark anemones tend to be almost completely black, ones from Vanuatu are yellow with only two stripes and, in some groups, the males' yellow tail fins turn white if they undergo a sex-change.Clarke's clownfish have the furthest reaching distribution of any clownfish; they are found throughout the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific Ocean, most commonly in the Persian Gulf, west Australian coast, Indonesia, Micronesia, Taiwan and Japan.These clownfish live on coral reefs, in lagoons and on steep rocky reefs no deeper than 60m.Like most clownfish, Clarke's clownfish are immune to the stings of sea anemone tentacles and live amongst these tentacles for protection. The anemones benefit from this symbiotic relationship is protection from small predators and food scraps from the clownfish. There are 10 species of sea anemone known to host clownfish, and Clarke's clownfish have been found to exploit all of them.Clarke's clownfish are omnivores and opportunistically feed on dead anemone tentacles, food scraps, small crustaceans, small fish, zooplankton and algae.Within a group of Clarke's clownfish, a dominance hierarchy is present. All clownfish in a group are male hermaphrodites, except the largest who undergoes a change into a female.Lined wrasse
Lined wrasses are orange-brown in colour with pale longitudinal blue-green lines. Their heads have irregular light blue-green lines.They have opercular flaps with black spots and caudal fins with broad black bars on the posterior part of the fin. Females are distinguished by the white versus yellow band on the base of the tail and males by the lined versus spotted pattern on the body.Lined wrasses inhabit coastal slopes and drop-off areas in small groups and can be found at depths between 20-45m.Picasso triggerfish
The Picasso triggerfish is a robust, grey fish with a unique, notable pattern of stripes giving it the distinct appearance of a painters colour palette - hence its name after the famous painter Pablo Picasso. It's Hawaiian name, humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa, literally means "pig-snouted triggerfish."This pattern has a number of unique elements, that make identifying the Picasso triggerfish easy:Atlantic horseshoe crab
The Atlantic horseshoe crab lives in the shallow waters of the north-western Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and in brackish coastal lagoons, where it can reach lengths of up to 60cm.