Shortnose Tilefish
Malacanthus brevirostris
Sand Tilefish
Malacanthus plumieri
About
The sand tilefish is a slender reef fish that builds its own home out of rubble and spends long stretches hovering above it, gently waving its long fins.
Also known as: muttonfish
How to tell it apart
Its long, slim shape can look like other elongated reef fish at a glance. The dark blotch on the upper lobe of its yellow tail fin is the mark to check.
Appearance
Its body is long and slim with a slender, rounded head, coloured yellowish white to pale bluish grey, with pale yellow and blue markings on the head. There is a large, sharp spine at the corner of the gill cover. The dorsal and anal fins run long along the body, and the tail fin is crescent-shaped and mostly yellow, with a dark blotch on the upper lobe.
Habitat
It lives over sand and rubble flats near reefs and seagrass beds in the western Atlantic, from the Carolinas and Bermuda down through the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and along the coast of Brazil. It builds a mound of rubble or shell fragments to shelter near, close to the sea floor.
Did you know?
Its scientific name honours Charles Plumier, a French friar and naturalist who explored the Caribbean in the late 1600s. The German naturalist Marcus Bloch never saw a live specimen; in 1786 he described the species purely from one of Plumier's drawings.
Log it in Into the Blue
Describe what you saw and we name it, then keep every species you find in your Oceandex.