It swims upside down, and it is not confused.
Fish that live on the ceilings of caves orient to the surface above them rather than to gravity, so this one spends most of its life belly-up against the rock, moving along the roof of an overhang as if it were the floor. Cardinalfish, some gobies and several cave-dwelling groupers do the same thing, and the arrangement makes sense: the ceiling is a surface with a wall of open water beneath it, so the fish gets cover overhead, an escape route in every direction and food drifting past below.
The golden color, which reads as unmissable in a torch beam, is nearly invisible without one. Yellow disappears at about twenty meters, and in a shaded cave much shallower than that this fish looks like a pale gray smudge until you light it.
What it does next is the memorable part, and the regional guide notes it too: it retreats when you approach, then comes back out to look at you. Wait without moving and it will be out again in under a minute, hanging upside down a hand's width away, studying the dome port.
It lives in the 🌊 Red Sea and nowhere else.
The genus. Chlidichthys Smith 1953 - ichthys (fish). ETYFish
The species. Chlidichthys auratus Lubbock 1975 - golden. ETYFish
- bright golden yellow, no markings
- swims upside down along cave ceilings
- shy, but comes back to look at you
- up to 4.5 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats to C. auratus.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
