Almost every photograph of this fish exists because somebody wanted to sell one.
Deep hogfishes live in the band below recreational diving, they are strikingly banded in red and white, and they are small enough for a tank. That combination made them one of the prizes of the marine aquarium trade, and it is technical divers on mixed gas, at sixty and seventy meters, who go down and catch them. A single fish can go for a four-figure sum, and the collectors are a small number of specialists who bring the animals up slowly enough to survive the pressure change.
So the deep reef got documented commercially before it got documented scientifically. A good deal of what is known about the appearance, depth and behavior of mesophotic fishes on many coasts comes from collectors' notes and dealers' photographs rather than from surveys.
On this coast the species is genuinely rare and genuinely deep. If you meet one it will be at the bottom of a wall, and it will be a small banded fish that turns and goes back into the rock.
The species. Bodianus opercularis (Guichenot 1847) - opercular. ETYFish
- white body crossed by bold red-orange bands
- dark spot on the gill cover
- long pointed snout
- below thirty-five meters and mostly deeper
- up to 18 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no major threats known for this species.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
