The elegant wrasse – Anampses elegans – moves around the lagoons in voracious schools; they descend on the coral and algae to eat, but then get shooed away by the other fish, particularly by the aatuti (banded scalyfin - Parma polylepis). Aatuti, the local name given to them by Norfolk Islanders, are keen underwater gardeners who don't take kindly to their carefully tended and guarded patches being raided.
Above are images of the elegant wrasse in action. They descend, en masse, hurriedly munching on the algae until an aatuti (or another species of fish, but most often the aatuti) dives into the fray and scatters them in all directions. They know they will be moved on very quickly, so the action is frenzied. The elegant wrasse completely out-number the aatuti, not that it seems to faze these aggressive and self-important aatuti!
When you’re snorkelling, you can often hear these wrasses before you see them because they make an incredible racket as they gnaw on the corals and algae. And if you listen carefully, you can also hear the aatuti, who makes a warning ‘bok, bok, bok’ noise as he shoos all-comers!
Today, a very irritable and non-plussed aatuti decided to warn me off as well. I managed to capture his annoyance just before he veered to one side. All bluff and bluster!
Below are more images of the beautiful, elegant wrasse. It’s just a shame they have no manners!
Below are images of the aatuti. In the central image, you can clearly see the aatuti’s carefully tended patch of algae.
