Fish Identification: Barred Hamlet

Video Transcript

"The marine organism we're going to identify now is the barred hamlet. Hamlets may be one species of fish with several very distinct color variations or it may be several different species of fish. That is the basis of the current controversy about their taxonomy. The original thinking was that there were several distinct species but some scientist now think that the different, so called, species are just color variations of the same species. We'll let the Ichthyologist hash that out and focus on the hamlets that have been given distinct genus, in species, names. The barred hamlet is one such hamlet. It is the most common hamlet species that one will see in the Caribbean and one of the most common seen in other parts of the Tropical North and South American waters. Barred hamlets have ill-defined brown body bars over a pale white to yellowish body. The mid-body bar is the most prominent and often forms a long narrow V-shape, the point of which is at their belly. They also have bright blue vertical lines on their face and bright blue spots on their nose but these features can often be hard to see by divers. The barred hamlet is a relatively small fish, generally, three to four and a half inches in length with a reported maximum size of six inches. They inhabit reefs and rocky areas with lots of cover at depths ranging from ten to fifty feet. They are most commonly seen as solitary individuals and are commonly seen in most of the Caribbean and less frequently around Florida and the Bahamas. They generally stay close to the bottom of the reef where they swim along and can quickly duck into a hole for protection from predators. They can be curious and if you approach them slowly, they may allow close observation by divers. Barred hamlets, like all hamlets, are called simultaneously hermaphrodites, which means they have both female and male sex organs that are functional at the same time as adults. This does not mean that they fertilize their own eggs but it means that when a pair of barred hamlets mate, they take turns acting as male and female. Mating occurs multiple times over the course of several nights. That's the barred hamlet."