A unicornfish with no horn: this species never grows one, and its name comes from the group rather than from the animal. What it does have is the best face on the reef - a black mask, yellow above the eye, orange lips, and a tall orange dorsal fin it raises when it is annoyed.
It belongs to this sea and the western 🌊 Indian Ocean, and it does not occur in the Pacific, where an almost identical fish replaces it. The two were treated as one species for a long time; the split matters here because ours is the orange one.
The blades on the tail base are ringed in orange and permanently erect, and the warning is deliberate - a fish carrying fixed knives advertises them.
It grazes leafy brown algae, working the same patches daily, often in pairs. Divers see it constantly and photograph it badly, because it keeps turning side-on and moving off just as the camera comes up.
The species.Naso elegans (Rüppell 1829) - fine. ETYFish
How to recognise it
no horn at all, despite the name
bright orange dorsal fin and orange lips
two orange-ringed blades on each side of the tail base
black mask across the face, yellow above the eye
length up to 45 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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