Yellowspotted Bandfish
Acanthocepola Abbreviata
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Quick Facts
Distribution
- The Yellowspotted Bandfish is a slender, ribbon-like fish with a striking orange-pink body dotted with two rows of small yellow spots along its sides. It can grow to about 30 cm long.
- The yellow spots run in pairs down each flank, and the long dorsal fin glows yellow-orange at the top. A thin dark border traces the edges of its fins.
- In Australia, this species turns up in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Its range stretches broadly through the Indo-West Pacific, from the Persian Gulf across to the Philippines and Papua New Guinea.
- The Yellowspotted Bandfish lives on muddy seafloors, anywhere from fairly shallow water down to about 80 m deep. Soft, silty ground is where it feels at home.
- Rather than roaming, each fish digs its own burrow in the mud and keeps to it. Large numbers often live close together, making the seafloor look like a busy little neighbourhood.
- When tiny drifting animals drift overhead, Yellowspotted Bandfish rise up out of their burrows to feed. They often hold themselves almost upright in the water as they do so, a posture that looks quite unlike most other fish.
- Groups come up together to feed in this vertical posture, which means a colony in full feeding mode is an unusual sight on the bottom.
- Its body is long and compressed from side to side, giving it a ribbon-like shape. The tail fin blends smoothly into the long dorsal and anal fins that run nearly the full length of the body.
- The Yellowspotted Bandfish belongs to the bandfish family, a group of elongate fish that are not well known by most divers and anglers. Several other species in this family also live in Australian waters.
Species Interaction
Yellowspotted Bandfish: A Bycatch Rarity, Little Known to Most
- Research & Rare Encounters
- Ecosystem Role
The Yellowspotted Bandfish appears occasionally as bycatch in northern Australian prawn trawl operations, where it registers at very low levels of encounter. A burrowing, soft-sediment species, it lives out of sight and rarely crosses paths with divers, anglers or beachgoers. Researchers studying tropical demersal communities are the most likely people to ever document one.
Scientific Classification
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Chordata
- Class: Teleostei
- Order: Eupercaria incertae sedis
- Family: Cepolidae
- Genus: Acanthocepola
- Species: Acanthocepola abbreviata
Conservation Status
The Yellowspotted Bandfish has not been assessed by the IUCN Red List, and it holds no listing under Australia’s EPBC Act. It is a rarely encountered, burrowing species of soft-sediment habitats, and species of this type are seldom subject to formal conservation review.
Interaction Highlights
Research
Occasionally recorded in trawl surveys of northern Australia's soft-sediment habitats.
Ecosystem
A burrowing predator of shallow tropical sediment communities, largely unseen by people.
Elusive / Overlooked Species
Finding: Difficult
Temperament: Shy
Location: Inner reef, Outer reef
Danger: None
