Five and a half centimeters, and it will see off a fish ten times its size.
Dottybacks are among the most aggressive fish on a reef relative to their weight, and this one is at the small end of the family. It holds a crevice, a few branches of coral and the water immediately above them, and it defends that against damselfish, wrasses, other dottybacks and anything else that comes within about a body length, by charging directly at the face.
The bluff works because of what is behind it. The fish never fights more than a flick away from a hole it can fit into and the intruder cannot, so the worst case for the dottyback is a fast retreat, while the worst case for the intruder is being bitten in the eye. Anything larger does the arithmetic and leaves.
It is black with bright blue lines drawn along the head and the front of the body, which is unmistakable when you get close and nearly invisible when you do not, because at any distance it reads as a small dark shape vanishing into coral.
Like almost all its relatives here, it lives in the 🌊 Red Sea and nowhere else.
The genus. Pseudochromis Rüppell 1835 - pseudo- (false). ETYFish
The species. Pseudochromis springeri Lubbock 1975 - Honours Victor G. Springer. ETYFish
- black body with bright blue lines along the head and forebody
- one of the smallest fish you will notice on the reef, under 6 cm
- always within a body length of a hole
- up to 5.5 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
