A meter and a half of fish and almost no fish at all: a body the thickness of a broom handle ending in a long tube of a snout, with a whip-like filament trailing from the tail. Seen head-on it disappears entirely, which is the point.
It feeds by suction. The snout is a pipette - the mouth at the tip opens suddenly and the prey is pulled up the tube by the inrush of water, so the fish never has to accelerate, only to get close. Getting close is done by stalking: it drifts in behind a parrotfish or a goatfish, using the larger animal as a moving screen, then slides out at the last moment.
It also hangs vertically over seagrass and sand, motionless, aligned with whatever is behind it. A cornetfish holding station beside a boat line or a soft coral is doing exactly what a stick insect does.
The Mediterranean owes it a chapter. This species came through the Suez Canal (🇪🇬 Egypt), was first recorded off 🇮🇱 Israel in 2000, and spread the length of the sea to Spain within a decade - one of the fastest documented invasions by any marine fish, and a large one at that. What it does to the fish communities it arrives in is still being counted.
The genus. Fistularia Linnaeus 1758 - -ia (pertaining to fistula). ETYFish
- extremely long thin body ending in a tube-shaped snout
- a whip-like filament trailing from the middle of the tail
- hangs motionless and almost invisible head-down over the bottom
- length up to 1.6 m
