asian sheepshead wrasse got featured in documentary and I have been inspired

Surge Wrasse (Thalassoma purpureum), family Labridae, order Labriformes, Lord Howe Island, Australia

 These fish are protogynous hermaphrodites. They all hatch out as females, and turn into males later in life.

photograph by Jordan Robins 

hi i saw a post about the fish playing with the human child and even though your addition to that post is 3 years old by now i would love to hear more about ftm sheephead fish :3 (no pressure btw!)

Fish curiosity, in my inbox?? It's more likely than I think, apparently! xD

First off, there's actually multiple fish dubbed 'sheephead'! There's the sheepshead- note the extra S in there- and they look like this:

And yes those are their teeth. Horrifying tbh, but they're very good at what they do- crushing invertebrates and other shelled snacks! They're an Atlantic species that sticks to temperate and warmer waters, and they max out at about half a meter in length.

That's not the fish we're talking about today. The focus of today is the California sheephead wrasse- note the lack of a second S- also known as the 'sheephead' for short. Not confusing at all! We definitely don't bash our heads into walls over the naming conventions and lack of record-keeping of our scientist predecessors.

THIS is the sheephead wrasse, the species of the lovely and now Tumblr-famous Red! :D With a length of up to a FULL meter, they're a whole different size class of fish! They can be found along the west coast USA from the Baja Peninsula all the way up to Monterey, and dwell almost exclusively in kelp forests and nearby environments. I will use one of Red's pics as an example of female coloration-

The lighting isn't great but you can see how her body is streamlined, and besides the white underside of the jaw, has a salmon-pink coloration! Females can be pink or a dull silver-beige. And much like other large marine wrasse, MALES have a drastically different appearance.

This thing is built like a damn tank!! Sheephead are a species of wrasse that shift colors to gain those striking black scales and physically bulk up when becoming males- because guess what? ALL OF THEM ARE BORN FEMALE! By default, all male California Sheephead are FTM trans :) They use that bulky head and extremely tough set of jaws to not only hunt their preferred prey- mollusks, gastropods, and bivalves, etc- but also to bash and chomp down on rival males. This one has won many battles, look at that scarred up muzzle!

The sex change is determined by several factors, as it's not guaranteed all sheephead will eventually become males. Because sheephead school in a harem system- many females to very few males- in order to maximize pressure of stronger offspring, the biggest and healthiest sheephead male will drive out competition from the school. Naturally, a sheephead that lives longer and gains a greater size will have a much higher chance of shifting from a female to a male, if the conditions are right. Stress induced from competition can suppress the hormones that stimulate this transition in females, so they're less likely to gain size and shift from female to male if there's already strong competition taking place. However, in the event there are too few males to mate with the females, or no males present at all, the biggest female will start transitioning to fill the empty slot! It's a long process that can take as few as a couple months, or up to years, depending on resources available.

Conversely, if there are TOO MANY males, they can revert back into females! This process also takes a long time, and is a lot more rare to witness, especially because right now male California sheephead in particular are being spear-fished into becoming an Endangered species :c Sheephead adult males in good condition are considered a trophy animal in spear-fishing and similar marine trophy hunting off the West coast, and because males in particular are being targeted, the gene pool is being reduced when it wrecks the harem structure of schools.

As a fun fact- they're also an incredibly smart fish, and can form relationships with humans, as demonstrated with me and sweetiepie Red cx There's many documented cases of large marine wrasses forming long-term friendships with divers! Here's a humphead wrasse that made friends with a diver she learned would crack snails open for her with a hammer:

I don't work at the facility with Red anymore, but I currently work with two unnamed adult male sheephead, and once again they both like me and seem to despise all my coworkers, even if I never had the opportunity to train them like I did with little Red xD They pick favorites I guess? Now if only I could make friends with the garibaldi...

Lubbock's wrasse for day 3 yipppeeeeee

@fish-daily

Daily fish fact #695

Amanda’s flasher wrasse!

This species was only very recently named and discovered. It used to be considered a part of the red-tailed flasher wrasse species, but genetic studies and morphological differences prove that this Australian fish is its own distinct species!

Harlequin tuskfish By: A. Power From: The Fascinating Secrets of Oceans & Islands 1972

TERFs can fucking die and go to hell mad about it!

Fuck them!

It’s not their future!

Fishuary 2024 - Day 3: Wrasse @fish-daily

I'd never drawn a wrasse before, and when trying to choose which one to make I learned how varied they are in terms of shape and colour.

I chose Kato's fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus katoi) which is native to the seas around southern Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

Nature's Marvels. Text by Lucy Berman. Illustrations by Roy Coombs. 1971.

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because of the design-an-oc thing i set up on my artfight, i've gotten a bunch of different new ocs!!! creme brulee, liv and wrasse hehehe!!

Hogfish (Lachnolaimus maximus)

Family: Wrasse Family (Labridae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Vulnerable

Named for its elongated snout which it uses to root through sediment in search of crabs and other seabed-dwelling prey, the Hogfish is a unique species of wrasse native to the western Atlantic Ocean, where it mainly inhabits areas near coral reefs (particularly reefs dominated by soft corals.) All Hogfishes are born as females, but as they progress through their lives some may develop into males upon reaching older age; members of this species live in small schools consisting of numerous small females and a single large male (which can be distinguished from the females around him by his larger size, darker colouration, longer fin spines and the distinctive black spot near the base of his tail,) responsible for fertilizing all the group's eggs, and in the event of the school's male dying or otherwise being separated from the rest of the group the largest, oldest remaining female will lose the ability to lay eggs, increase in size, develop the colouration of a male and gain the ability to produce sperm, taking his place. In addition to changing in colouration when changing sex, Hogfishes are also known to be capable of changing colour in order to avoid detection by predators (taking on duller colouration to match their surroundings upon spotting predators such as Sand Tiger Sharks,) and surprisingly it seems this colour-changing ability is managed purely by the chromatophores (colour-changing cells) in their skin with little input from the brain, as the skin will continue to change colour to match its surroundings for a short period even after being removed from the fish's body.

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Image Source: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/49432-Lachnolaimus-maximus

🐠 Daily Fish Fact: 🐠

The Asian Sheepshead Wrasse is one of the largest species of wrasse, native to the western Pacific Ocean. It is a hermaphroditic species, meaning that it has both male and female organs which allows it to change its sex. All Sheepshead are born female and as they grow older, eventually will change sex.

California Sheephead (Semicossyphus pulcher), family Labridae, Channel Islands National Park, California, USA

* These large wrasse are protogynous hermaphrodites. They all start off their life as females, and some of them become males when they are older.

Photograph via: National Park Service

can you draw a moon wrasse?? love ur blog btw

fish 205 - moon wrasse

Today is Wet Beast Wednesday!

Today's wet beast is: Sling-jaw Wrasse

Olive's Wet Beast Fact: WHST THE LITERAL HELL THAT GIF aptly named, this species of wrasse has the fastest jaw in the Pacific Ocean. It makes snakes dislocating their jaw look like child's play.

Stay tuned for more Wet Beast Wednesdays!

Daily fish fact #353

Rockmover wrasse!

The juveniles and mature individuals of the species are so strikingly different that they're sometimes called two separate names, rockmover wrasse for adults and dragon wrasse for juveniles!

And as there's no point in claiming something without anything to show; the fish above was an adult, but here is a juvenile for comparison: