Bird wrasse
Gomphosus varius
Sixbar wrasse
Thalassoma hardwicke
About
The sixbar wrasse is a common reef fish native to the tropical Indo-Pacific. It is of minor interest to local fisheries and is also popular in the aquarium trade.
Also known as: six-banded wrasse, sixbar wrasse, sixbarred wrasse, xixbar wrasse, moon wrasse, sixbarred wrasse, six-barred wrasse, wrasse, six-bar wrasse, sixbar wrasse, six-barred wrasse, sixbarred wrasse, six-banded wrasse
- Length
- 15 cm · max 20 cm
- Depth
- 0–15 m
- Temperature
- 24–28 °C
How to tell it apart
Look for six dark bars on a pale green body, with the last two forming saddle-like shapes over the base of the tail. This barred pattern is fixed and easy to count from a distance.
Appearance
This wrasse has a greenish body with four dark bars across its upper body and two more saddle-like bars over the base of the tail, six bars in total. Larger adults develop pink streaks radiating out from near the eye. It grows to a maximum length of 20 cm, though most individuals stay closer to 15 cm.
Habitat
This species lives on coral reefs, reef slopes, and in lagoons across the tropical Indo-Pacific, from East Africa to Japan, Indonesia, and northern Australia, at depths down to about 15 m.
Conservation
The IUCN lists the sixbar wrasse as Least Concern. It is sometimes collected for the aquarium trade, but this is thought to matter only locally, and no other major threats have been identified.
Did you know?
One aquarium sixbar wrasse was seen carrying hard food pellets it could not chew to a particular rock and smashing them into pieces there, repeating the same trick on the same rock every time, a rare example of tool use in a fish.
Log it in Into the Blue
Describe what you saw and we name it, then keep every species you find in your Oceandex.
