Name the mystery fish?

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jalswager

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I recently dove in Cozumel with my new camera. While viewing pictures on my laptop I zoomed in on a photo and cropped it. I noticed an unusual shape and zoomed in further and was wondering if an experienced underwater photographer or marine fish expert might recognize it. It has an unusual shape especially near the tail where the body seems to slope away and outwards. If anybody knows, please let me know. I've attached the original picture and the cropped picture! Thanks!
 

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It's either a common Smooth Trunkfish or Cowfish (hard to tell from the back side.)

Both Trunkfish and Cowfish have EXO-skeletons meaning hard external triangular shaped (from the front) body.......

Here's one from Bonaire.

David Haas
www.haasimages.com
 

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The one on the first picture looks like a "spotted trunkfish" I can't really see anything on the second pic...
 
It's either a spotted trunkfish or a spotted cowfish. It's impossible to tell from your photo because the only visible difference is that cowfish have horns, which would not be visible in your photo.

This is a spotted trunkfish.
Trunkfish.jpg

And this is a video of a cowfish. The trunkfish and cowfish can be found spotted or in this hexagon pattern, or a combination of both.


For some reason, imbeding videos has not been working for me so here is the link.
Cowfish wierdness - YouTube

Note that if anybody has an explaination for the behavior of the cowfish in this video, I'd love to hear it.
 
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