Off the coast of the Maldives, a new species of fish has been found by researchers.
The fish is new to scientists, and has been named Rose-Veiled Fairy Wrasse (Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa). The name of this fish has been derived from the local Dhivehi language, making it one of the first fish to be named in the local language. Finifenmaa means rose in English, indicating to the national flower of the island country and also indicating the rosy pink hue of the fish.
The fish was found between 50- to 150-meters (160- to 500-feet) beneath the ocean’s surface, in the Twilight reef, an unexplored bunch of coral ecosystems.
This finding was the result of a collaboration between scientists from the California Academy of Sciences, the University of Sydney, the Maldives Marine Research Institute (MMRI), and the Field Museum.
This was done as a part of the California Academy’s Hope for Reefs initiative. The initiative aimed to gain a better understanding of coral reefs and to protect them too.
The Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa was originally found around the 1990s. But till now, it was recognised as the adult type of an other species of fish, Cirrhilabrus rubrisquamis. This was because the researchers had only collected one sample of the fish to study from the Chagos Archipelago (a chain of islands located 1,000 kilometers to the south of the Maldives.
A more detailed approach has been taken by the scientists in this study. The scientists have researched both the adults and younger ones separately and with more detail. They have measured each bone in the body of the fish, the number of scales in each part of the body, and the color of adult males compared colour of adult females. The scientists concluded that this is a unique species of fish.
Lead author and University of Sydney doctoral student, Yi-Kai Tea, said that what the team thought was just one widely spread species actually turned out to be two different species. She also mentioned how this was important in conservation.