Sacura parva is a gorgeous little anthias that we’d only seen in pictures of dull, freshly dead preserved specimens. But thankfully, there’s a few intrepid ‘biofreaks’ like ourselves who actually leave the comfort of their armchair to bring us face to face with these animals in the most intimate of ways.
This time, the rare fish fanciers have two fish nerds to thank for the lovely encounter, Dr. Luiz Rocha for one of his inimitable photographs, and Bart Sheperd, for an invaluable video clip right from the source. At 330 feet or about 100 meters, the light has diminished greatly and there are very few true corals to speak of, but this is where some of the neatest mesophotic fish start to dominate.
It’s so funny how long it seemed like the Borbonius anthias was the holy grail of deepwater fishes, then it came into the aquarium trade, and now it seems to be in so many of these deep reef fish videos. But really this clip aims to show the gorgeous little anthias, Sacura parva, which compared to other species in the genus, is quite small and cute.
(It is quite frustrating to see that in my remote dives, as well as in this deepwater diving, there’s virtually nowhere in the world you can go and not see fishing line. It’s hard to ignore these unnatural straight lines wrapped around the rocks but at least it’s of very little concern once it’s securely tangled in the reef bottom.)
