Fish Identification: Yellowhead Jawfish

Video Transcript

"The marine organism we're going to identify now is the yellowhead jawfish. The next time you're hanging out under your dive boat, in a sandy or rubble area, look around closely, you may see a small burrow dwelling fish, it's the yellowhead jawfish. They're very interesting fish to watch. After building a burrow in the rubble or sand, the yellowhead jawfish will be seen hovering, tail down, just above the burrow opening. When it feels threatened, the fish quickly backs down into its burrow so only its head protrudes. If it feels an even greater threat, the yellowhead jawfish will retreat quickly all the way into its burrow and out of sight. Some will reemerge fairly quickly, while others will wait quite a few minutes to ensure that whatever threat was there, is gone. They can be seen with regularity in all parts of the Tropical waters of Florida, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean. Yellowhead jawfish are also very pretty fish. Their bodies are white to a pearlescent bluish white. Their heads are slightly darker and range in color from a pale yellow to a pale tan. Their fins, generally, are fairly clear and pearlescent in appearance. They range in size from two to four inches with most in the two to three inch range. Their depth range is from ten to sixty feet and they are most commonly seen in sandy areas near coral reefs. I've generally seen them in small communities of five to ten animals in a relatively small reef area. While hovering over their burrow, yellowhead jawfish are constantly feeding. Their diet consists almost entirely of zooplankton that drifts by their burrows. They will, occasionally, eat small jellyfish and hydroids that also happen to drift by. The small communities of yellowhead jawfish that I mentioned earlier, serves a useful purpose during the breeding season, which is usually late Winter or early Spring. Since the fish rarely wonder far from its burrow, it's convenient to have females and males located near one another. When they mate, the male courts the female by swimming in an arched position with its fins pointed toward the female. After fertilization, the male incubates the eggs in his mouth until they hatch. The male, with eggs, will have his mouth slightly open and one will be able to see the eggs, which start out clear and then darken as the fry develop in them. The male also turns the eggs to aerate them regularly. That's the yellowhead jawfish."