Fused teeth that form a beak, used to scrape algae off dead coral. What comes out the other end is sand, and on a tropical reef a large share of the sand was made this way.
The colour phases are as confusing as in the wrasses, which is the family they belong to. Initial-phase fish are drab and mostly female; terminal males are bright and hold territory. The two phases of one species have been described as separate species more than once.
Several sleep inside a cocoon of mucus they secrete each night, which is thought to mask their scent from predators that hunt by smell. A night dive finds them wedged in a crevice inside it, and the cocoon does not survive being disturbed.
Size runs from small algae-scrapers to the bumphead and rainbow parrotfish at over a metre, which bite living coral and are audible doing it from some way off. The large species are the first to disappear where there is spearfishing.
Every one has a page. They are shown as a list rather than as pictures because nothing has been photographed or logged for them yet, and a species with nothing behind it should not sit in front of one that has.
How many of the 16 carry a record at each destination. A species usually carries several, so these do not add up to 16.
All 1316 species in one index, with filters for destination, rarity and hazard.