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The semicircle angelfish is a narrow, oblong fish with a greenish-yellow or yellow-brown body covered in dark blue spots everywhere excepts its face and pectoral fins.

Red stumpnose are endemic off South Africa and occur from False Bay to Margate, although they are more common south of East London.

These fish use camouflage to mimic the ripple patterns in the sand caused by currents and tides. 

Romans are an endemic species found on rocky reefs off southern Africa at depths from 5m to 100m.

There are 51 species of surgeon fish, 19 of which occur in southern African waters.

Three-spot angelfish get their name from the two spots that appear just behind their gill slits and a third spot on their forehead.

Devil firefish (Pterois miles) have beautiful reddish or brown stripes and delicate fins, making them interesting to watch and photograph. “Pterois” means “winged” and “miles” means soldier, so in English, their species name means “winged soldier”.

The “strepie” (which means “small stripe” in Afrikaans) is so-called because of the bright yellow stripes that run horizontally along this silver fish’s body.

There are 30 to 40 different kinds of seahorses, but only five of these have been seen around the southern African coastline.

These sharks are often confused with puff adder shysharks but can be identified by their broader, more bluntly rounded snouts and depressed heads, and their large, light spots on a dark body.

These shysharks are similar in colour and markings to puffadder snakes, hence their name. 

Beaked sandfish use their hard-pointed snouts to burrow in the sand, where they hide out during the day. At night they come out to hunt.