Five weeks ago I spoke at IMAC West in Long Beach California on board the Queen Mary. This was the first year IMAC had moved to the West Coast under new organizers... by far the most exciting vendor booth, and the gathering point of the conference, was at Quality Marine. Quality Marine is one of the largest, and best, livestock wholesalers based in Los Angeles. In their booth they had a four foot cube tank (roughly) stocked with corals and a wonderful variety of fish... I took in every specimen... and after a few minutes I noticed a fascinating little Centropyge darting in and out of the rocks...
I went to the biggest fish nerd of the Quality Marine crew (confirmed by me, and agreed upon by the QM crew!). His name is Bob Pascua... a knowledgeable fishhead and genuinely nice guy... I help a LFS out in my area, and have dealt with QM much in the past. This Centropyge by all outward appearances looked like Centropyge shepardi¡K but for many reasons I had suspicions...
Centropyge shepardi is found in the Marianas Islands and Southern Japan... The only place it¡¦s been exported out of is Guam, the largest and most populated island of the Marianas... These exports ceased about six years ago¡K give or take, when the major collector retired... I happen to travel regularly to Guam on business to the Navy Base there, and have spent months underwater on about six trips over as many years... I see Centropyge shepardi there regularly... but at depth... not really seeing any great amounts above 60 feet. I know the island well... including the fish nerds and the guys that collect... no one is exporting at the moment that I've confirmed... and this is further confirmed by the absence of shepardi in the industry in recent years... (those of you shaking your head¡K just wait a minute!).
So... going back to that little specimen in the QM tank... I had an idea of what this little fish was... but not from looking at it, more from knowing the market and knowing no one on Guam was exporting... I thought "Why would someone send one shepardi from Guam?" If someone was exporting again, surely there would be many...
So... what else could this little fish be? To fully explain that we need to go back a few years... The book many angelfish nuts now know well is "Angelfishes of the World", published in English by Julian Sprung. The book was originally written in Japanese by author Kiyoshi Endoh, an angelfish nut and friend who lives near Tokyo. In Kiyoshi¡'s original Japanese version these are the pages that show Centropyge shepardi...
The two photos of Centropyge shepardi are on the top right... the larger photo a typical specimen and the smaller one an orange specimen lacking bars... more on the variation in a little while... Well, look at the opposite page, showing our good friend the flame angel... The bottom photos show some hybrids and aberrants... and what is that fish in the bottom left photo? Surely... that fish must be shepardi... or perhaps a flame/shepard hybrid? No... that fish that looks amazingly similar to shepardi was a fish collected far outside the range of shepardi, and was a C. loriculus/ferrugata (flame/rusty) hybrid... collected in the Phillipines!
In the English version, Julian placed this photo in the Centropyge shepardi section, with a note about what the fish was...
So... with that information known... in addition to other specimens of this that I've seen go to Asia, I proposed the question right off the bat to Bob there at the QM booth... "Is that fish from the Phillipines?" He exclaimed, "Yes! What is it?" Bob knew it was something special... but not exactly what it was... it's not very obvious... I told him it was a flame/rusty hybrid... and not shepardi...
It was also confirmed that rusty angels came out from this exporter in Cebu in droves (expected), in addition to a small number of flame angels (flames are a central Pacific fish, but there are breeding populations where these fish are being collected in the Phillipines). Usually when angelfish hybridize in the wild, one species is common and one is rare... as is the case with this hybrid, likely resulting when the small population of flame angels cannot find mates to spawn with at dusk...
I took many photographs of this hybrid Centropyge... what a fish! And even better, it was TINY... about an inch and a quarter... here she is! I've said this a lot lately... but look at this friggin' fish!
More to come...
