Thursday, September 13, 2007

One from the weekend

This is the grey (or gray) angelfish, Pomacanthus arcuatus,....which is differentiable from the full grown French Angelfish (Pomacanthus paru) by virtue of being...er.... greyer. This is actually the intermediate phase. Like the French angel this species changes from a stunning juvenile colour scheme to a slightly more dignified adult phase. The faint white band you can see is the remnants of that juvenile phase.


gray angel2

These guys are usually really curious, which is both a benefit and an issue for photography but this one hovered stock still as I snapped these two shots. It took me a while to work out he'd found a cleaning station. If you look closely at the photo above you can see a periclemenes shrimp. It's sat cleaning the angel's belly/chin directly below his pectoral fins (the ones on his side).

grey angel



In the second photo a sharknose goby, Gobiosoma evelynae, is cleaning just above his eye. Its the stripey black/blue/yellow cigar looking thing.

1 comment:

tai haku said...

Now I look again the goby is actually on the pectoral fin in the first photo too. The shrimp is further down and is visible in profile.