No photo available
Green humphead parrotfish (bumphead parrotfish)
Bolbometopon muricatum
Valid name.
- English
- Green humphead parrotfish (bumphead parrotfish)
- Scientific
- Bolbometopon muricatum
- Dhivehi
- No recorded Dhivehi name
- Group
- Reef fish
- Maximum size
- Up to about 1.3 m and 46 kg
- Depth and habitat
- Clear outer lagoons and seaward reefs, about 1 to 40 m
- IUCN status
- VU · VulnerableVulnerable (VU), assessed 2024
Description
The largest parrotfish, dull green to grey with a pale face and a steep bony bump on the forehead. It travels in schools, ramming and biting chunks of live and dead coral with its fused beak-like teeth, and is a major producer of coral sand. Schools often sleep together in caves or on the reef at night, which made them easy targets for night spear-fishers elsewhere. It is slow-growing and long-lived.
In the Maldives
Uncommon in the Maldives but occasionally seen in schools on outer reefs. All parrotfish became protected in the Maldives in 2020 (catching, keeping and, from March 2021, trading are banned).
Sources
- fishbase.se /summary/Bolbometopon-muricatum.html
- fao.org /4/AD471E/AD471E00.htm
- fishbase.se /comnames/CommonNamesList.php?ID=5537&GenusName=Bolbometopon&SpeciesNa
- visitmaldives.com /en/news/parrotfish-critical-to-reef-heath-protected-in-the-maldives
- commons.wikimedia.org /wiki/File:Bolbometopon_muricatum_290186802.jpg
Dhivehi name source: No Dhivehi name found in MRS 1997, FishBase or Dhivehi Wikipedia.