Whoohoo! Don't see this too often....

[friscuba]

On today's charter my DM Cathy came up very excited saying she'd seen a puffer she's never seen here before (Been diving here since '76) and asked if I had my camera on board today so she could go back down and take a picture of it so people would believe her... so I quickly housed my camera and gave it to her....

I've been laid up a few weeks with a hamstring tear and I'm hoping I can get in the water again next week... I hope it's still around the next time I'm at the site.

I'm curious if these are more common on the other islands?

 

[rgbmatt]

Cool! I've seen a couple with small patches of yellow, but never full yellow ones like that.

They are apparently more common in other parts of the pacific - we import them quite regularly from Christmas Island.

For those who don't know, this is an abnormal colour phase of the spotted puffer Arothron meleagris.

 

[friscuba]

I'd seen both yellow and blue dogface puffers back in my aquarium shop days way back when, but the solid yellow is darned cool.

 

[teog]

Cool! I've seen a couple with small patches of yellow, but never full yellow ones like that.

They are apparently more common in other parts of the pacific - we import them quite regularly from Christmas Island.

For those who don't know, this is an abnormal colour phase of the spotted puffer Arothron meleagris.

I wouldnt call them abnormal. They are often seen in the aqaurium market. Depending on how gold they are they range here in FLA from 100-250 or so.

The one in the pic is beautiful.

 

[Shaka Doug]

Wow! That's cool, never saw one like that. Great photo too!

 

[Al Mialkovsky]

Wow that is freakish.

 

[scottitheduck]

Yeah, that is really amazing.... RGBMatt, what's the common name?

G

 

[Kim]

I've seen something similar in the Similans - also bright yellow with spots. I'm not sure it was the same fish or not though - I had mine down as a box fish.

 

[friscuba]

The boxfish you probably saw in the Similans was probably a Cubicus, I'm not sure of the genus but I suspect it's closely related to our boxfish here.

 

[rgbmatt]

Yeah, that is really amazing.... RGBMatt, what's the common name?

Guinea Fowl Puffer or Spotted Puffer, depending who you ask. You're probably very familiar with the normal black & white version:

Arothron meleagris, Guineafowl puffer

There are actually two species in the pacific with the yellow phase - A. meleagris and A. nigropunctatus. Of these two, only meleagris is found in Hawaii and the yellow ones are extremely rare here. This probably reflects the genetic makeup of the original colonizing population.