Mandarinfish

Crawls

Mandarinfish

Synchiropus splendidus

Blue with an orange maze pattern. Hovers along the bottom, fanning its big pectoral fins.

Group
Other reef fish
Family
Dragonets (Callionymidae)
Size
About 6 cm long
Habitat
Sheltered lagoons and inshore coral reefs of the western Pacific, down to about 20 m

About

A tiny, dazzling fish: bright blue with wavy orange lines that wind across its body like a maze. Its dorsal fins share the same blue-and-orange pattern, and in males the first dorsal fin stands tall.

Its blue comes from a blue pigment inside its cells — something only a handful of vertebrates are known to have.

It hides among coral and rubble during the day, then comes out at dusk to pick at small creatures, moving in short, jerky hops near the bottom.

In Fish Around

It fans its big pectoral fins and potters slowly along near the bottom of the screen.

More fish