A green wrasse with a beak, rowing across the reef with its pectoral fins while the rest of the body stays rigid. The snout is a third of its length in a big male, and it grows longer as the fish ages.
It is a tool for reaching. The birdmouth pushes into holes, under plate corals and between branches for the small crustaceans that shorter-faced fish cannot get at, and the fish works its way along a reef poking into every gap. Nothing else here forages this way.
Females are brown in front and pale behind and have a much shorter snout, so the two sexes read as different fish - the shape is not a species trait but a male one, developed at the sex change.
This is the 🌊 Indian Ocean and 🌊 Red Sea species. The Pacific has a barred relative in the same genus, and the two meet nowhere. Thirty-two centimeters (13 in), constantly moving, and a reliable feature of any daytime reef here.
The genus.Gomphosus Lacepède 1801 - gomphos (nail or pin). ETYFish
The species.Gomphosus caeruleus Lacepède 1801 - blue. ETYFish
How to recognise it
long tubular snout, a third of the body length in adult males
males bright blue-green, females brown in front and pale behind
swims with the pectoral fins alone, rowing rather than undulating
length up to 32 cm
Why it's threatened
Biological resource use
Intentional use: (large scale) [harvest]
The main threat to this species likely comes from collection for the aquarium trade. A study on the impact of aquarium fish collection in Mozambique suggests that the aquarium collection poses little detrimental effect on the reefs studied (Whittington et al. 2000). Notably, the management on fish collection for aquarium trade in Mozambique is considered ineffective (Whittington et al. 2000). Long-term and increased harvest of this species throughout the species range may threaten this species if fisheries are not well-managed.
Coral reefs, which are important habitats for this species, is reported to be declining overall within Southeast Asia (Tun et al. 2004), but less so within the western Indian Ocean (Ahamada et al. 2004). Habitat degradation can threaten survival of this species but this may not be the main threat currently.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
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