Snappers, grunts, sweetlips, emperors, breams and fusiliers. Mid-sized fish that spend the day in stationary schools under a ledge or over a coral head and feed at night, so the same reef holds a different arrangement after dark.
The daytime school is the thing to look for. It is not feeding and not going anywhere: it is resting, in one place, and it will let a diver approach slowly to a metre or two. Move fast at it and it parts and reforms behind you, which is worth knowing before spending a dive chasing one.
The grunts are named for a sound they make by grinding pharyngeal teeth, and it carries through the water. Two facing each other with mouths wide open are displaying rather than fighting, and the colour of the mouth lining is part of the display.
The fusiliers break the pattern. They feed on plankton up in the water in fast streams rather than resting in a school, and they change colour at night to a blotched pattern that does not resemble the daytime fish.
Juveniles are often in mangroves or seagrass rather than on the reef, and several species need both. Where the mangroves have gone, the adults have thinned even when the reef itself is intact.
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 39 carry a record at each destination. A species usually carries several, so these do not add up to 39.
All 1316 species in one index, with filters for destination, rarity and hazard.
