Banded parrotfish

Notolabrus fucicola, the banded parrotfish, blue wrasse, kelpie, New Zealand banded wrasse, purple parrotfish, saddled wrasse, Southern purple wrasse, Southern wrasse, winter bream or yellow-saddled wrasse, is a species of wrasse native to the eastern Indian Ocean, off eastern Australia and all around New Zealand on rocky, weedy reef areas. Aging work in New Zealand suggested these wrasses can live at least 35 years.

Habitat

They are selective foragers which eat crustaceans such as chitons, limpets, barnacles, mollusks, crabs, and sea urchins. As they grow their diet undergoes change with the smaller fish, of lengths between 10 and 18 centimetres (3.9 and 7.1 in) feeding mostly on amphipods and isopods, while the larger fish prey mainly on bivalves, crabs, and gastropods. It occurs in beds of kelp and over rocky reefs which have some exposure to tides and currents at depths of 1–90 metres (3.3–295.3 ft). These are territorial fish which are long-live, often over 20 years old, and they defend their territories aggressively.

Notolabrus fucicola spawn in the southern Spring and Summer from July through to December, they do not spawn synchronously. Many other wrasses are protogynous hermaphrodites but this species is a secondary gonochorist, in which individual fish change sex before they reach sexual maturity. It has two colour forms, but it is not sexually dimorphic. In any population there will be just one morphological type of male. Workers have, so far, been unable to find any individuals with gonads in transition from female to male but particular environmental or social conditions may still be involved in inducing sex change in at least a some of the fishes in a population. Unlike other wrasses which are protogynous hermaphrodites populations of Notolabrus fucicola can have large individuals of both sexes.

Distribution

Notolabrus fucicola is found in the south eastern Indian Ocean and the south western Pacific Ocean in Australia and New Zealand. It is found throughout New Zealand including the Three Kings Islands, Stewart Island and Snares Island. In Australia it is found off the south east from southern New South Wales, Victoria to eastern South Australia, as well as Tasmania.