Last week, Ian and another volunteer ventured far off shore of Queen’s Beach to do a REEF survey. In about 15-30 ft of water, the visibility cleared up and Ian took a wonderful picture of some cauliflower coral colonies, a few saddle wrasses and a juvenile yellowtail coris. The juvenile coris has similar markings to Nemo, but it is a completely different species!
Is that Nemo?
November 1, 2010 
2 Comments
Reef Watch Waikīkī 
Here is a neat link that has more information about the Yellowtail Coris:
http://www.mauioceancenter.com/index.php?id=11&ss=0&page=marine&content=marine_detail&cat=1&CRid=50&limitstart=0
Funny story. Since I’m currently writing a paper on the Yellowtail Coris, I found something interesting about this picture. If you look at it closely (primarily by using a photo software to enhance it) you can actually see that this juvenile is beginning one of its transition stages into the adult coloration. If you zoom in on the tail you see that it is all clear and that the white line at the base near the caudal peduncle is starting to fade away. There is also a small amount of yellow starting to fill in at this spot. So its not only a juvenile, its a “older” juvenile which is slowly changing colors from the tail forward to its head (it changes color starting from its tail, the white spot on its head is the last to go before it changes to its full adult coloration.)