Bony fishes

WrasseLabridae

Family61 species

Wrasses are the second largest family of fish in the sea, and the range inside it is absurd: from a five-centimeter possum wrasse hiding in rubble to the humphead wrasse at over two meters and two hundred kilograms, with several hundred species in between. Parrotfish are wrasses too, specialized for biting rock. If you cannot place a colorful reef fish, the odds are good it is one of these.

They all row. A wrasse swims with its pectoral fins, beating them like oars and keeping the tail folded for emergencies, which gives the family its unmistakable bustling flight and lets them hold position precisely while picking at something.

Most of them change sex. A wrasse matures as a female, and the largest fish in a group converts to male, rebuilding its gonads and repainting itself into a terminal-phase pattern so different from the female that many species were originally described twice, once for each phase. Remove that male and the biggest remaining female starts the change within days.

The cleaner wrasse is the one to watch. A small blue and black species sets up shop at a fixed spot on the reef and other fish queue for it, including predators that could swallow it, and hold still with their gills flared and mouths open while it works over their skin and inside their mouth removing parasites. The station is a genuine institution: clients from all over the reef, regular hours, and roughly two thousand visits a day for a busy cleaner. It also has a con artist's problem, because a cleaner would rather eat the client's mucus than its parasites, and clients that get bitten leave or chase the cleaner, so the cleaners behave better in front of an audience of waiting customers. That work made this small fish one of the most-studied animals in behavioral biology.

At night many wrasses bury themselves in sand or spin a mucus envelope to sleep in.

How to recognise wrasse

ElongateLong and slender, but still fish-shaped - trumpetfishes, needlefishes, cornetfishes.

elongate, somewhat compressed body
often vibrant colours and intricate patterns
protrusible mouth
single dorsal fin along most of the back

61 species in Wrasse

Anampses

Identified by two teeth that project forward out of each jaw, visible at close range and unique here. They are tweezers: the fish picks small invertebrates off the bottom rather than crushing anything, which is unusual in a family built around hard prey.

Bluespotted Wrasse

Anampses caeruleopunctatus

Yellow-breasted Wrasse

Anampses twistii

Bodianus

The hogfish: pointed snouts with prominent canines projecting at the front, used on hard-shelled prey. Several start life as small black fish covered in white spots that work as cleaners, then abandon the trade as they grow - so the juvenile and the adult are not only different colors but different jobs.

Axilspot Hogfish

Bodianus axillaris

Crescent-tail Hogfish

Cheilinus

The heavy wrasses. Thick fleshy lips, steep foreheads and deep bodies, and the genus includes the largest wrasse in the sea. They take hard prey - crabs, molluscs, urchins - and the lips take the punishment that goes with it.

Cheilinus quinquecinctus

Cirrhilabrus

The fairy wrasses: small, deep-living, in loose groups of one male and several females above rubble. The males carry trailing pelvic fins and switch their colors on and off during display, which is when anybody sees them properly.

Longfin Fairy Wrasse

Cirrhilabrus rubriventralis

LCEndemic

Purple-boned Wrasse

Cirrhilabrus blatteus

Coris

The sand-divers. Frightened or finished for the day, a Coris goes head-first into open sand and is gone, which is why one that was in front of you is suddenly nowhere. Their juveniles are so unlike the adults - orange-red with white saddles ringed in black - that most were described as separate species first.

Gomphosus

The birdmouths. The snout is drawn out into a long curved tube, up to a third of the body in adult males, and it exists to reach into holes and coral branches that a blunt-faced wrasse cannot. They row with the pectoral fins alone and effectively never stop.

Green Birdmouth Wrasse

Gomphosus caeruleus

Endemic

Red Sea Bird Wrasse

Gomphosus klunzingeri

Halichoeres

Small to mid-sized wrasses that work rubble and sand rather than coral, and sleep buried in it. Most carry a false eyespot on the dorsal fin as juveniles, and the adults are told apart on the pattern of lines across the head rather than on body color.

Checkerboard Wrasse

Halichoeres hortulanus

Dark Side Wrasse

Halichoeres iridis

Dusky Wrasse

Halichoeres marginatus

Nebulous Wrasse

Halichoeres nebulosus

Zigzag Wrasse

Halichoeres scapularis

Hemigymnus

The thicklips, and the lips are visible from across a coral head. They take mouthfuls of sand and rubble, sort the animals out inside the mouth and spit the rest, which is a way of eating that needs a mouth built to take abrasion.

Blackeye Thicklip Wrasse

Hemigymnus melapterus

DDEndemic

Sixbar Thicklip Wrasse

Hemigymnus sexfasciatus

Hologymnosus

Cigar-shaped and far more slender than any other wrasse here, with the juveniles striped lengthwise and the adults ringed crosswise. They cruise open sand and rubble in the mid-water rather than working the bottom.

Pastel Ringwrasse

Hologymnosus doliatus

Ring Wrasse

Hologymnosus annulatus

Iniistius

The razorfish. The body is flattened into a blade and the forehead drops almost vertically, which is a shape built for one purpose: driven head-first into open sand, the fish disappears completely and keeps going underneath it. They live over bare sand away from the reef, and the escape is the whole animal.

Fivefinger Razorfish

Iniistius pentadactylus

Peacock Razorfish

Iniistius pavo

Oxycheilinus

Built on the same plan as Cheilinus and drawn out thin: pointed snout, slim body, a large mouth for the size of the fish. They are also the fastest color-changers on this page, shifting from pale to brick red within seconds, so the shade in a photograph means nothing.

Blackstripe Wrasse

Oxycheilinus arenatus

Cheek-lined Wrasse

Oxycheilinus digramma

LCEndemic

Mental Wrasse

Oxycheilinus mentalis

Oriental Wrasse

Oxycheilinus orientalis

Pseudocheilinus

Small striped wrasses that never leave the coral. They move through the branches of a single head in short darts rather than crossing open water, so they are seen in fragments - a line of stripes through a gap - and photographed with difficulty.

Sixline Wrasse

Pseudocheilinus hexataenia

Striated Wrasse

Pseudocheilinus evanidus

Pteragogus

The wrasses that do not cruise. Small, mottled, with a shaggy broken outline and the front dorsal spines drawn out into short filaments, they sit still in weed and rubble and let things pass - the opposite of what the rest of the family does all day, and the reason they are recorded far less often than they occur.

Pteragogus flagellifer

Stethojulis

Small, fast and never still. Males carry bright blue lines along a green body and a red patch behind the eye; females are plain brown with fine white speckling, and the two were long taken for separate species. They work shallow rubble in continuous fast loops.

Bluelined Wrasse

Stethojulis albovittata

Cutribbon Wrasse

Stethojulis interrupta

Thalassoma

The shallow, restless ones. Green bodies with magenta lines running back from the eye, in the surge and white water of the reef crest, moving constantly and never holding station long enough to be framed.