Patrick Plantard, La Réunion
Info
(Randall & Maugé, 1978)
The Blackhead Smoke Emperorfish Apolemichthys guezei is certainly the rarest Emperorfish in our world's oceans; it is native only around Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean and is considered very, very rare even there.
The well known fish expert, Dr. Gerry R. Allen from Australia assumes that the angelfish could also be found around Mauritius and Madagascar, but photo evidence to support this assumption is still missing.
The only known photo of a living black-headed smoky angelfish was taken by Hughes Vitry, who was able to photograph this animal at Le Port, a city in the French overseas department of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, at a depth of 200 meters.
As Hugues confirmed to us today in an email, the photo was taken by him, but all rights of use belong to Helmut Debelius, so that he unfortunately cannot make his photo available to the Meerwasser-Lexikon, see here:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1731819
The body of the deep-sea emperor is golden brown to orange with bright yellow spots, the head is brown, the posterior margin of the gill cover is dark brown or black.
The Blackhead Smoke Emperor's caudal fin and the posterior portions of the dorsal and anal fins are also brown.
Keeping experience of this super rare angelfish is not known or documented.
Synonymised names
Holacanthus guezei Randall & Maugé, 1978 · unaccepted
The Blackhead Smoke Emperorfish Apolemichthys guezei is certainly the rarest Emperorfish in our world's oceans; it is native only around Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean and is considered very, very rare even there.
The well known fish expert, Dr. Gerry R. Allen from Australia assumes that the angelfish could also be found around Mauritius and Madagascar, but photo evidence to support this assumption is still missing.
The only known photo of a living black-headed smoky angelfish was taken by Hughes Vitry, who was able to photograph this animal at Le Port, a city in the French overseas department of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, at a depth of 200 meters.
As Hugues confirmed to us today in an email, the photo was taken by him, but all rights of use belong to Helmut Debelius, so that he unfortunately cannot make his photo available to the Meerwasser-Lexikon, see here:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1731819
The body of the deep-sea emperor is golden brown to orange with bright yellow spots, the head is brown, the posterior margin of the gill cover is dark brown or black.
The Blackhead Smoke Emperor's caudal fin and the posterior portions of the dorsal and anal fins are also brown.
Keeping experience of this super rare angelfish is not known or documented.
Synonymised names
Holacanthus guezei Randall & Maugé, 1978 · unaccepted
