Fish Identification: Blue Angelfish

Video Transcript

"The marine organism we're going to identify now is the blue angelfish. The blue angelfish is, obviously, a member of the angelfish family of fishes. It is nearly entirely a pale blue to blue green color with just a little yellow on the trailing edge of its fins. It it sometimes confused with the queen angelfish but the blue angelfishes colors are more muted than that of the queens and the blue angelfish lacks the queen angelfishes crown on the top of its head. There is another species of angelfish that looks like a cross between a blue and a queen, as it is mostly pale blue but has a muted crown. This is the Townsend angelfish, which is a hybrid formed when a blue angel and a queen angel interbreed. Blue angelfish range in size from eight to eighteen inches, with most about fourteen inches long or shorter. Juvenile blue angelfish are difficult to distinguish from juvenile queen angelfish. Both juvenile species have beautifully colored bright blue and yellow bodies with several, usually three, electric blue vertical bands on the sides of their bodies. The distinguishing characteristic that identifies the blue angelfish juvenile, is that the middle bright blue bar is straight, whereas, the the queen angelfishes middle bar is clearly curved. Juvenile blue angelfish can often be found at fish planing stations where they feed off parasites found on other fish. Blue angelfish can be found, primarily, in the waters around the Florida coast, in the Bahamas, and around Bermuda. It's rare to see them in the Caribbean, in fact, I've only ever seen them in Florida and the Bahamas. The inhabit rocky areas and coral reefs and are, generally, found at depths shallower than eighty feet. Blue angelfish feed, primarily, on sponges, in fact, one reference states that ninety-five percent of their diet is sponges. The small remainder consists of algae, coral polyps, and tunicates. Blue angelfish, like all angelfish, are pelagic spawners, this means that the male and female release their sperm and eggs into the water column in close proximity to one another where the eggs become fertilized. The eggs are buoyant so they float to the surface, where they drift as part of the marine plankton pool, until the fry hatch. As a result, many of the eggs are lost, as they are consumed by planktonic feeders of various types. That's the blue angelfish."