WRASSE

The Labridae family is another of the coral reef's most diverse groups with around 500 species in 60 different genera. Yet despite their wide distribution and variety of types these lovely, colourful fish are often overlooked by divers simply because there are so many of them. Ever heard that joke - if you don't know what it is, it's probaby a wrasse?

Most wrasse are small fish, on average well under 20 centimetres long, so they tend to flit about the reef avoiding predators and getting ignored by divers. Perhaps most often noted is the ubiquitous cleaner wrasse that are spotted hanging onto other, larger fish doing a tidy up job. At just a few centimetres long they are hardly visible until you see them at work. The largest wrasse is the Humphead, which can measure up to 2.5 metres (8.2 ft).

All wrassses are carnivores and feed on a wide range of smaller invertebrates. Some follow larger fish around, picking up their leftovers and, of course, many larger fish feed on them. Surprisingly, cleaner wrasse never get eaten by the fish that use their services as the removal of parasites and dead tissue is seen as a bigger bonus. There is a cleaner wrasse approaching the humphead in the image below.