A small pale angelfish with a black mask across the eye and yellow behind it, living deeper than most of its family and lasting about two seconds in an open frame before it is gone.
It lives here and nowhere much else: the 🌊 Red Sea and the 🌊 Gulf of Aden, and that is the whole range. A fish that occurs in one sea has no reserve population to draw on, which is the reason this catalogue flags endemics at all - and why one that is uncommon within a small range deserves more attention than its size suggests.
It feeds on sponges and tunicates, picking at things nothing else competes for, and it works overhangs and cave mouths between fifteen and forty meters. That preference for depth is a real field mark in itself: an angelfish this pale, this small and this deep is this species.
Pairs hold a territory, and like other angelfish it starts female and can turn male, so a pair that loses a fish reorganizes rather than breaking up.
The genus. Apolemichthys Burton 1934 - ichthys (fish). ETYFish
The species. Apolemichthys xanthotis (Fraser-Brunner 1950) - xanthos (yellow) + otis (ear). ETYFish
- pale gray-white body, dark mask over the eye and a yellow patch behind it
- yellow tail and yellow around the gill cover
- small, shy, and quick to put coral between itself and a camera
- length up to 20 cm
Why it's threatened
There appear to be no major threats to this species. Collection is limited and is not considered to be impacting the global population.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
