[youtube width=”680″ height=”400″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59M-xZ801Jc[/youtube]
Blue Harbor Japan just shared this video of a live Roa excelsa as it is being coaxed into feeding, perhaps for the first time. The Roa excelsa video is much more clear than the still preview image suggests, showing a striking vertically gifted buttterflyfish with bold bright white bands. It’s been almost two years since we heard a peep from Roa excelsa and rightfully so; catching this feet near 400 feet down requires extreme fish catching skill and deep diving experience.
Even with expert care in capture and handling this twilight reef fish is still a delicate subject after being decompressed from such an extreme depth, then packed up and shipped to a rare fish handler in Japan. In this case the usual handlers of this Roa excelsa are Blue Harbor in Japan and we presume that Rufus Kimura of Hawaii is still the only fish collector with the dive experience necessary to locate, capture and decompress the rare Roa excelsa.
