The “blue bastard”, an elusive and uniquely combative reef fish from northern Australia, long known only in fishing folklore, has been recognized officially by science.
Queensland Museum scientist Jeff Johnson, who identified the species from photos taken last year by a Weipa fisherman, has formally christened it Plectorhinchus caeruleonothus – a direct Latin translation of the colloquial name anglers bestowed on a fish famously difficult to land.
“Caeruleo is blue and nothus is bastard. That was the origin of the name applied by fishermen for many years and I thought, why should I argue with that? It seemed like a perfect name for me,” Johnson told Guardian Australia.
Johnson said it was unusual to identify a new species in a fish so large and so well-known through fishing TV programs and magazines.
Due to being native to murky far-northern reef waters swimming with sharks and crocodiles, it had proven understandably elusive, he said.
He used photos from fly fisherman Ben Bright to show that the blue bastard’s 12 dorsal spines make it utterly different from a sweetlips species it had previously been confused with.
The blue bastard is distinctive in that it changes color from yellow, dark and light stripes as a juvenile, to a silvery blue in adulthood, when it can grow up to a meter in length.
But it was the adult males’ propensity for “serious combat” through locking jaws and grappling at the water’s surface, in a spectacle dubbed “kissing” by anglers, that really sets the fish apart from related species, Johnson said.
The chief executive of Queensland Museum, Suzanne Miller, said the discovery of the blue bastard was “another exciting achievement” for museum scientists, who described 120 new species in 2014-15.
PHOTO: The blue bastard’s 12 dorsal spines make it utterly different from a sweetlips species it had previously been confused with.
CREDIT: Queensland Museum.