A fish named after this sea, found in it and in no other, and almost nobody has seen one alive.
It lives from about forty meters down to three hundred and fifty. That puts the whole species below recreational diving on the shallow end and into submersible territory at the other, so its entire known range sits under the depth at which people normally look at fish. It was described only in 1989, which for a twenty-centimeter reef fish in one of the best-studied seas on the planet says everything about where the gaps are.
Those gaps are not small. The mesophotic zone, roughly forty to a hundred and fifty meters, was written off for decades as a dead band between the reef and the deep, and turned out to hold dense coral communities and a fauna substantially different from the reef above it, with a high proportion of species found nowhere else. In this sea that work is still in its first decades.
If you do see one it will be red with a dark blotch at the base of the second dorsal fin, and you will be deeper than you meant to be.
The genus. Sargocentron Fowler 1904 - sargós (Greek) + centron (any sharp point). ETYFish
The species. Sargocentron marisrubri Randall, Golani & Diamant 1989 - maris. ETYFish
- dark blotch at the base of the second dorsal fin
- red body, large eye, like the rest of the family
- below forty meters, so not seen on ordinary dives
- up to 18 cm
