SYDNEY: The blue bastard fish, long rumoured to exist among Australian fisherman, has formally been identified as a new species.
Queensland Museum ichthyologist Jeff Johnson named the fish plectorhinchus caeruleonothus — the Latin translation of blue bastard. “Caeruleo is blue and nothus is bastard,” Johnson told Mashable Australia.
North Australian locals and fly fisherman had given the creature the colloquial name because of its hue and the difficulty of catching it, but many thought it was simply a painted sweetlips fish and not something new. “The water is relatively murky [up there] with quite a few crocodiles,” Johnson said. “That’s one of the reasons why it hasn’t been noticed in the past.”
See also: A fish that doesn’t belong is wreaking havoc on our ocean
Photos of the fish, now recognised as a unique species of sweetlips, were sent to Johnson last year by Weipa fisherman Ben Bright. “I suspected that there was a new species of sweetlips around,” Johnson said. “I saw Bright’s photos and immediately recognised it as something new … The dorsal spines were 12, and the painted sweetlips has nine or 10.”
Bright sent the museum a few he had caught, and after geneticist Jessica Worthington Wilmer analysed the DNA sequence codes of comparative specimens, it was determined to be something distinctive.
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