New Shrimpgoby record for Australia

Denise Jenkins (view profile) spent 3 years photographing fishes at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia. All that underwater time culminated in the publication of her book Fishes of Ningaloo (view webpage), which contains over 1200 photographs of more than 500 species showing colour variations and life stages.
In late August 2011, Denise was snorkelling when she saw a goby she didn't recognise. She said that in order to photograph it quite a few trips up to the surface and back down again were required. She was concerned that the fish would dive into its burrow, so she tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. Her skills were rewarded with an excellent image of a Wide-barred Shrimpgoby, Amblyeleotris latifasciata, a new species record for Australia.
Until now, the species was known from the Gulf of Thailand, the Philippines and Bali (view the webpage for this species on Fishbase). Thanks to Denise's efforts we can now extend the distribution for the species to north-western Australia.
Thank you to goby expert Dr Doug Hoese for confirming the identification of the species from Denise's photo.
Posted on October 4, 2021 04:39 AM by markmcg markmcg

Comments

Wow amazing! Great work, Denise! I’ve only had the privilege of snorkelling on Ningaloo Reef for a few days - it would be no mean feat taking photos of all those fish.

Posted by lisa_bennett over 2 years ago

Nice work @denissy and I love that so many community members helped out with this one @maractwin @alex_h @markmcg and @gmoo. A massive effort, we were about 5190 species of fishes recorded for Aust waters, it's now 5191 :)

Posted by amandahay over 2 years ago

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