A gray damselfish with a bright yellow tail, hanging in midwater off a slope in loose groups - and one that belongs to this sea alone.
It was described in 1995, which for a common, conspicuous fish on a well-dived coast is remarkably late. That happens because damselfish are hard: several regional species look almost identical to widespread Indo-Pacific ones, and separating them takes counts, measurements and eventually genetics rather than a photograph.
It feeds on plankton in open water, like the chromis it shares the slope with, and drops back to the reef when something large comes past.
Endemic species like this are the reason a local catalogue is worth building. An Indo-Pacific field guide will key this fish out as something else, because the fish it belongs to does not live anywhere the guide covers.
The genus. Neopomacentrus Allen 1975 - neo- (new). ETYFish
- gray-brown body with a bright yellow tail and yellow rear fins
- dark spot at the top of the pectoral fin base
- in loose midwater groups feeding on plankton
- length up to 12 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
