Deep blue with a single broad yellow bar across the middle and a yellow tail - one of the two large angelfish that belong to this sea, and one of the most photographed fish on any 🌊 Red Sea reef.
Its range is the 🌊 Red Sea and the 🌊 Gulf of Aden, and that is all. A fish this conspicuous, this popular in the aquarium trade and this narrowly distributed is exactly the kind that a catalogue should flag: there is no reserve population elsewhere to draw on.
It shares the reef with the Yellowbar Angelfish, and the two are told apart at a glance once you know - the bar here is broad and vertical, on the yellowbar it is a curved crescent tapering to the belly.
It eats sponges and tunicates, works cave mouths and overhangs, and holds a territory in pairs. Juveniles are a different animal: black with fine blue and white bars, hidden in shallow rubble, and cleaning parasites off larger fish while they grow.
The genus. Pomacanthus Lacepède 1802 - poma (lid or cover) + acanthus (thorn or spine). ETYFish
The species. Pomacanthus asfur (Forsskål 1775) - from Ta-bak el herr. ETYFish
- dark blue body crossed by one broad bright yellow bar
- yellow tail, blue-edged fins
- juveniles black with fine blue and white bars
- length up to 40 cm
Why it's threatened
There appear to be no major threats to this species. Collection for the aquarium trade is limited to a few locations and does not seem to represent a global threat.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
