Male and Female

[seaslug]

Blue Throat Wrasse.

The male generally has a harem of several adult females and a family of juvenile females. If the male is taken or he dies, the most dominant female changes sex to male and becomes leader of the 'pack', or more correctly school.

[P Plates]

The greens in #1 are gorgeous and, whilst bright, frame rather than overshadow the fish. Also like the composition of this. #2 is good but to me not nearly as impressive as #1.

Some interesting facts - the female (assume she is #2) looks a bit glum, maybe she is far down in the pecking order and won't get a chance to be leader of the pack.

[seaslug]

The greens in #1 are gorgeous and, whilst bright, frame rather than overshadow the fish. Also like the composition of this. #2 is good but to me not nearly as impressive as #1.

Some interesting facts - the female (assume she is #2) looks a bit glum, maybe she is far down in the pecking order and won't get a chance to be leader of the pack.

Thanks Gabby. I don't know whether the female is glum or not (gave up trying to work out females years ago ) but as far as her place in the pecking order goes, I suspect she's probably next in line by her colouring. She's already developed the blue throat of the male and her side markings indicate that a change is not too far away.

It's not known whether adult females actually leave a school to start a family group of their own as a male.

[eaglem]

Interesting colours in these two fish.

[seaslug]

Interesting colours in these two fish.

Yes many fish are brightly coloured but it's interesting that at depth the colours are not at all obvious. Reds are lost at less than 10 metres and the deeper you go, more of the spectrum dissappears.

At 30 metres everything is a shade of blue and deeper the shade goes off towards black.

So without the light you carry, there is often no indication of what colours there are until you light them.

Makes you wonder why nature painted the fish this way.

Perhaps there's something else in colour that fish see or sense that we don't?