Opinion: Mueller’s butterflyfish are gross

I’m sure there’s been plenty of times when we posted a rare fish with subtle beauty that few readers appreciated but the Mueller’s copperband butterflyfish is not one of them – it’s just gross. I scoured high and low for the most flattering image of a Chelmon muelleri and found this decent one by Michael Moye but I’m telling you folks, this is as ‘good’ as Mueller’s butterflyfish gets and it’s all downhill from there.

I don’t care what anyone says, Mueller’s butterflyfish are nasty, second-rate has-been wanna-be versions of the beautiful copperband butterflyfish. A mueller’s butterflyfish is like taking a perfectly good looking orange and even striped Chelmon rostratum and you made all the orange go brown, changed the angle of the stripes so they look crooked and then give it a grotesque hump-head that totally perverts the copperband’s iconic silhouette.

I seriously love almost all animals and fish but I don’t like goats and I especially don’t like stupid Mueller’s butterflyfish. Every time I see one I get a little gagging feeling in my mouth – someone should pay divers to not catch them and leave them all in the ocean where they can be shark food or spearfishing targets like they were intended to be. Yuk.