The “blue bastard”, an elusive and uniquely combative reef fish from
northern Australia, long known only in fishing folklore, has been recognized officially by science.
Queensland Museum scientist Jeff Johnson, who identified the species
from photos taken last year by a Weipa fisherman, has formally
christened it Plectorhinchus caeruleonothus – a direct Latin translation
of the colloquial name anglers bestowed on a fish famously difficult to
land.
“Caeruleo is blue and nothus is bastard. That
was the origin of the name applied by fishermen for many years and I
thought, why should I argue with that? It seemed like a perfect name for
me,” Johnson said.
“I wondered what the reviewers of the paper would say about it but they
both agreed it was quintessentially Australian and we should go ahead.”
Johnson said it was unusual to identify a new species in a fish so large
and so well-known through fishing TV programs and magazines.
Due to being native to murky far-northern reef waters swimming with
sharks and crocodiles, it had proven understandably elusive, he said.
He used photos from fly fisherman Ben Bright to show that the blue
bastard’s 12 dorsal spines make it utterly different from a sweetlips
species it had previously been confused with.
The blue bastard is distinctive in that it changes color from yellow,
dark and light stripes as a juvenile, to a silvery blue in adulthood,
when it can grow up to a meter in length.
But it was the adult males’ propensity for “serious combat” through
locking jaws and grappling at the water’s surface, in a spectacle dubbed
“kissing” by anglers, that really sets the fish apart from related
species, Johnson said.
“I’ve spoken to a few of the guys and they say they often engage in
these episodes and they’re pretty serious about it too,” he said.
“One fish will see another one approaching in the distance and he’ll
just make a beeline for the other guy and they’ll go at it hammer and
tongs.”
Johnson worked with geneticist Jessica Worthington Wilmer, using DNA
sequence codes to describe this newest member of the sweetlips family,
after analyzing comparable specimens from Africa, the Middle East and
Japan.
Johnson has no anecdotal evidence on how the fish tastes but ventured it
would not be its finest attribute.
“I haven’t tried it myself and most of the fly fishermen practise
catch-and-release so I haven’t spoken to anyone that’s eaten one,” he
said. “It’s probably only fair edible quality, I’d suspect, going on the
closest relative.”
The chief executive of Queensland Museum, Suzanne Miller, said the
discovery of the blue bastard was “another exciting achievement” for
museum scientists, who described 120 new species in 2014-15.
Queensland science and innovation minister Leeanne Enoch said the
discovery was proof that museums were “much more than displays of static
objects”. She cited the importance of “retaining a pool of talented
scientists” in the state by investing in research through the
government’s $180m Advance Queensland initiative.
The scientific paper on Plectorhinchus caeruleonothus
has just been published in the zoological journal Zootaxa.
