Deep purple-blue with a bright yellow tail and tall sail-like fins - one of the most recognizable fish in this sea and one of the few that photographs badly, because the purple reads as flat gray unless the light is close.
It lives here, in the 🌊 Gulf of Aden and around into the 🌊 Persian Gulf, and effectively nowhere else. That, plus the color, is why it is among the most exported aquarium fish taken from this coast, sold worldwide under the name purple tang and priced accordingly.
Like every surgeonfish it carries a hinged blade at the base of the tail, folded into a groove and flicked out sideways with a sweep of the body. It is used on rivals rather than divers, and it cuts.
The fins are the display. Two males meeting raise the dorsal and anal fins to their full height, which nearly doubles the apparent size of the fish, and circle until one gives way - a fight settled by geometry rather than contact. Grazing is constant in between: it crops filamentous algae off rock all day, which is unglamorous and is what keeps a reef from turning into a lawn.
The genus.Zebrasoma Swainson 1839 - soma (body). ETYFish
deep purple-blue body finely speckled darker, with a bright yellow tail
high sail-like dorsal and anal fins, raised in disputes
white scalpel blade at the base of the tail
length up to 37 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no major threats known for this species.
Surgeonfishes show varying degrees of habitat preference and utilization of coral reef habitats, with some species spending the majority of their life stages on coral reef while others primarily utilize seagrass beds, mangroves, algal beds, and /or rocky reefs. The majority of surgeonfishes are exclusively found on coral reef habitat, and of these, approximately 80% are experiencing a greater than 30% loss of coral reef area and degradation of coral reef habitat quality across their distributions. However, more research is needed to understand the long-term effects of coral reef habitat loss and degradation on these species' populations. Widespread coral reef loss and declining habitat conditions are particularly worrying for species that recruit into areas with live coral cover, especially as studies have shown that protection of pristine habitats facilitate the persistence of adult populations in species that have spatially separated adult and juvenile habitats (Comeros-Raynal et al. 2012).
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
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