Bluestripe Snapper

Photo: Ian Shaw · © all rights reserved

Bluestripe snapper congregate in dense hovering schools of hundreds of individuals in the mid-water column of Drawaqa Passage, creating a shimmering yellow-and-blue curtain in the current. These schooling aggregations serve a predator dilution function, as a single large school is more confusing and harder to pick off individually than a solitary fish. At night the school disperses as individual fish drop to the reef to hunt invertebrates and small fish, reassembling at the same mid-water station by dawn.