Pink-eyed jawfish

Opistognathidae

Guardian: Lukas Patterson (Ocean Free)

•Jawfish are burrow architects, they use their mouths to shovel out sand, selecting larger rubble at the entrance so it won’t cave in and building in secret exit/s and a door to close their burrow at night. Good rubble pieces are often stolen from other jawfish which can lead to fights, or a joust of the mouths, which is where one fish tries to bite closed the other fish’s mouth (don’t try this at home).

•What is exciting about this fish is that I have looked at all the Australian species of jawfish and this does not look like any of them. On top of that, there are only a few collections of jawfish and each species is known from only one or two localities. These fish are mouth brooders so they are less like to travel across the open ocean and as such different locations might have different species.

•There is a good chance that this is an undiscovered species