Auzzie marine retailer Reeftopia is listing a rare and exquisite Sunset Fairy Wrasse, Cirrhilabrus greeni. Only described in 2017, the pictured fish was collected from the Timor Box, an area of the Timor Sea northwest of Darwin to the Western Australia/NT border, 180 nautical miles offshore.
Reeftopia’s Michael Park told Reef Builders that it was collected in 26 meters of water in a small area with “nothing shallower than 11m of water, with large amounts of schooling predators everywhere.” He says only two have been available before, and Reeftopia Australia has just the third one ever.
The Sunset fairy wrasse was first collected by Tim Green of Monsoon Aquatics after whom the new species is named, and it was described by Gerald R. Allen & Michael P. Hammer in 2017. The paper reads:
“A new species of labrid fish, the Sunset Fairy-wrasse, Cirrhilabrus greeni n. sp., is described from seven specimens, 39.4-47.3 mm SL, collected from the eastern Timor Sea, Northern Territory, Australia. The species is clearly distinguished by its terminal-phase male color pattern, consisting of pink to reddish hues on the upper half of the head and body and yellow on the lower half, in combination with a mainly yellow-orange dorsal fin and a scarlet-red anal fin. The caudal fin of the male is particularly distinctive, being emarginate but appearing lunate due to a clear central portion and tapering red bands along dorsal and ventral margins. Females can be distinguished from sympatric congeners by having a large black spot on the upper caudal peduncle. Sequencing of the mtDNA-barcode marker COI reveals that the new species has identical sequences to C. rubripinnis and C. aff. tonozukai from the Philippines, which have very different color patterns and tail shapes from the new species, indicating the new species has diverged recently and/or there is historic or episodic hybridization within the species complex.”
The full scientific description can be viewed at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1115674
Price
The price for such a rare find? A cool $3500 AUD, which equates to about $2325 USD.
Photo credit: Gary Gong
