It moves the reef around. This wrasse works rubble fields by taking a stone in its mouth, lifting it and flipping it over, then eating whatever was living underneath, and the stones it shifts can be heavier than the fish. A pair works together, one turning and one waiting on the far side for whatever runs.
Watch a pair for ten minutes and you will see a patch of bottom genuinely rearranged. On a rubble slope with several pairs working it, the surface layer gets turned over regularly enough to matter to everything living in it.
The juvenile is unrecognizable as the same species. It is pale with long ragged fins and it does not swim so much as drift, rocking and tumbling in the surge exactly like a torn piece of algae, which is the point - a small fish in open rubble with no cover has to be something other than a fish. People call it the dragon wrasse and photograph it far more often than the adult.
The change from that to a heavy gray rock-flipper is one of the more complete transformations on the reef.
The genus. Novaculichthys Bleeker 1862 - novacula (razor) + ichthys (fish). ETYFish
The species. Novaculichthys taeniourus (Lacepède 1801) - taenia (ribbon or band) + oura (tailed). ETYFish
- adults dark gray-green with a pale spot on each scale and a white bar at the tail base
- juveniles pale with ragged trailing fins, drifting like a torn frond
- usually in pairs, actively turning over rubble
- up to 30 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats to this species. It is present in the marine aquarium fish trade but the degree of its extraction is not known.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
