One of the funnest parts of keeping up with all the happenings in the world of marine life is learning about all the new discoveries of rare and exotic reef fish. Sometimes, oftentimes, these new species come from far away, very deep reefs, or a combination od depth and distance.
While not all the new species described and discovered this year fall under this umbrella, the top 10 ‘best’ new reef fish species of 2018 certainly did. The normally abundant new gobies usually drown out this list but we guess the goby taxonomists took a year off because 2018 was all about the basslets and anthias.
We had a pair of new Lipogramma basslets added to the fast growing genus of tiny beautiful species from the deep reefs of the Caribbean. The new shark and seahorse species are very uncommon to see on our annual top 10 list of new species, but we welcome these two new smaller members.
By far the stars of the proverbial show were the various anthias described from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Tosanoides is always a gorgeous genus of anthias with Anne Patrice’s anthias from the northwest Pacific Ocean being quite the looker, but it was somehow getting competition from the first congener to be discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, and named after the goddess of beauty, Aphrodite.
Lipogramma schrieri & L. barrettorum, two new species of Caribbean basslets
Chrysiptera uswanasi, the Newest Species of Damselfish from Papua
Navigobius asayake, The Newest Angelic Dartfish Species from Japan
Sensational Tosanoides aphrodite Described from St. Paul’s Rock
Hippocampus japapigu, the Japanese Pygmy Seahorse officially Described
Squalus clarkae is a Small New Shark Species with Cartoon Eyes
Cirrhilabrus cyanogularis, the Blue Throated Fairy Wrasse Finally gets Described
Trimma hamartium, the Mistaken Pygmy Goby is the newest species from Palau
