Tropical Fish 101

The snorkeling here on the islands, overall, is quite fantastic, which is why we keep doing it while we can. However, I thought a brief entry is needed to help get a sense of what it is like.

First and foremost are a yellow fish with black stripes, called the Sergeant Major. They are ubiquitous, and are basically the pigeon of the tropical fish world.

A close second is the parrotfish, which come in quite an assortment of colours, the most common being a blue/turquoise/green. If you've ever enjoyed lying on a white sand beach, and wondered where it came from, here's the dirty little secret: in part its parrotfish excrement. Parrotfish eat coral, and the calcium carbonate of their 'skeletons', which cannot be digested, gets excreted as fine white sand. In fact parrotfish are quite prolific, and on average excrete over a ton of sand per year!! As might not be surprising down here, they are also truly lady-boys, but in this case it is the females switching teams and becoming males later in life.


Other fairly common fish include angelfish and snappers. Some more distinctive looking fish include needlefish (which I initially thought were young barracuda) and trumpetfish. Anyways, that's about all I've been able to figure out and identify so far, but stay tuned.....