A hogfish the size of your finger. The genus runs to fifty centimeters and more, and this one matures at nine, which is what tends to happen to fish that specialize in deep walls: food arrives in small pieces, competition is thin, and there is no advantage in being big.
It works the wall and the rubble at its base, picking crustaceans off one at a time, and like the rest of the family it starts female and changes to male later.
White and red-orange with a dark crescent across the tail, which is the mark to look for and the reason for the name.
For a diver it is a deep-stop animal: below twenty meters, on a steep wall, usually alone and usually gone before the camera is ready. It was described only in 2010, which says less about the fish than about how rarely anyone spends bottom time at that depth looking at nine-centimeter animals.
The species. Bodianus sepiacaudus Gomon 2006 - sepia (ink) + caudus (tail). ETYFish
- small hogfish, white with a broad red-orange stripe along the upper body
- dark crescent across the tail
- hovers close to the wall, below 20 m
- length up to 9 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known threats to this species. However, species is sought after by aquarium trade collectors.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
