Bluehead wrasse

Photo: Matthew Bokach · CC BY-NC

One of the most abundant fish on healthy Caribbean reefs, with a complex social structure in which terminal males display brilliant blue heads and green bodies while initial-phase fish are yellow and white. Bluehead wrasse are important cleaners — they remove parasites from larger fish at designated cleaning stations — and their density is used by researchers as a proxy for reef fish community health. The unusually high density of bluehead wrasse at Scientists' Corner aligns with the high density of cleaning-station fish observed across the Tela reef system.