Sacura speciosa is an extremely rare reef fish which had never been photographed alive until now. Neptune Marine collected this Sacura speciosa while working with divers in Manodo, Indonesia who had been trained to capture and properly decompress deepwater reef fish. Recently, Neptune Marine divers happened upon a trove of cool deepwater fish in the Celebes Sea, a somewhat secluded ocean basin which is bordered by the Indonesian Islands of Borneo and Sulawesi and Mindanao, Phillipines.
The Sacura speciosa was collected at a depth of 130 feet (40 meters) and was slowly decompressed for 10 minutes every 15 feet until the fish was safely brought up to the surface. This live Sacura speciosa is currently being acclimated to aquarium life at the Bali facility of Neptune Marine until it can be shipped with confidence, and it is tentatively being shipped to a public aquarium institution.
This large Sacura speciosa reminds us of the fully colored Odontanthias katayamai that was collected by submersible in much deeper water. Both of the large anthias specimens are in the same showy league, a stark contrast to the tiny and stratospherically priced Bladefin Basslet from Curacao. In any case we can’t get enough of seeing old fish pictured in glory for the fisrt time and we look forward to aquarium fish collectors shedding more light on the beautiful reef fish of the deep reef and twilight zone.
