This fish lives for about a year. The animal it lives on can live for thousands.
Black corals grow at a fraction of a millimeter a year, and colonies have been dated at over four thousand years old, which makes them among the longest-lived animals on earth. They are not black in the water: the skeleton is, under a thin living tissue that is usually orange, white or gray, and they grow as wire and bush shapes on current-swept outcrops where nothing else takes hold.
The goby is two and a half centimeters and transparent over its upper half, so what you see against the coral is a row of narrow bars and a white line where the spine is. It clings on and faces the current, taking small planktonic animals as they come past, and it does not leave the colony. A pair clears a patch of polyps and lays its eggs on the bare branch.
It is a deeper animal than most reef gobies, from about fifteen meters down past fifty, and in this sea it was first confirmed from underwater photographs taken off Hurghada.
The genus. Bryaninops Smith 1959 - ṓps (eye or face). ETYFish
The species. Bryaninops tigris Larson 1985 - tígris (τίγρις). ETYFish
- two and a half centimeters, the upper part of the body transparent
- six or seven narrow yellow to red bars, each with a small spot above it
- white line along the spine, showing through the body
- clinging to a black coral in current, in small groups
- up to 2.5 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats to this species.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
