Please help ID Brilliant Green Fish, Bonaire

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

jltimothy

New
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
Location
Juneau, Alaska
# of dives
100 - 199
This seems an appropriate question on St. Patricks Day. On March 11, 2011 I swam with a solitary brilliant emerald green fish off the south end of Bonaire in the southern Carribean at about -60 ft. The fish had a heavy body, large lips, and was a pectoral fin swimmer...the tail barely moved. It was approximately 30 inches long and 10 inches wide at the belly. Though the pectoral fin motion was exceedingly rapid, overall fish swim speed was slow. There was a bright brown area on the head and upper back area. The green color was truly brilliant (not irridescent) emerald green (not olive). I've not seen that color on a fish before. Body shape was very grouper-like. The fish did not seemed frightened to be within two feet of me. I'm a fresh water fish biologist (salmonids), and while generally familiar with warm water fishes, have never encountered one like this. Please help! I have attached a poor drawing, and wish I had invested in an underwater camera.

Thanks. . .Jackie View attachment brilliant emerald green fish.pdf
 
Rainbow parrotfish is the right size & color combo. Generally seen alone, occasionally more than one, browsing around coral.
 
jltimothy:
This fish did not have any blue/turquoise hues
Did you shine a light on it?
At 60' *everything's* blue; the colors you see are created in your brain as it tries to "white-balance" the scene... often the colors it fills in with are *way* off.
Photographers learn this the first time they get uncorrected pix back taken at 60' or below - just shades of blue, not at all how they remember (saw) it.
I'm betting on rainbow parrot also, though your drawing looks more like a grouper. :)
Rick
 
Your drawing looks like a grouper at a cleaning station but I can't think of any large grouper that might appear as bright emerald green, no matter what the lighting may be. Dark, greenish, yes. Most Rainbows seem an oxidized-copper kind of green - bright or dull - I think of them being the color of the Statue of Liberty -- plus copper red-brown or bronze gold-brown.
 
Here's a big Rainbow for reference. This one's considerably larger than the one you describe, and old... lost most of it's green as the copper/brown dominates in older larger fish.
rainbow6.jpg

So, could it be a Rainbow Parrotfish?
:)
Rick
 
I am interested in what it might be if not a Rainbow Parrot. Here is a pretty big one that I saw in Cozumel that had the same behavior you described.
 

Attachments

  • 800-2831.jpg
    800-2831.jpg
    279.9 KB · Views: 564
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom