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Parrotfish — printable fact sheet
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Parrotfish
Scarus vetula
Parrotfishes are the reason tropical beaches are white. They scrape algae and endolithic cyanobacteria from dead coral rock with a beak formed from fused teeth, grind the rubble in a pharyngeal mill of interlocking tooth plates at the back of the throat, digest the organic film,…
Did you know?
- A single large parrotfish can produce hundreds of kilograms of sand each year just by eating and excreting bits of coral.
- Parrotfish are not eating live coral for the polyps — they are after the algae in and on the skeleton, though bumphead parrotfish do bite live coral and are a significant source of reef bioerosion. Rebuilding the mucus cocoon takes about half an hour and costs a meaningful share of the fish's daily energy budget, which is a strong indication of how valuable the protection is. Some Caribbean islands have banned parrotfish fishing outright — Bonaire and Belize among them — explicitly to protect reef and beach sand supply.
What I learned
Draw the parrotfish
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