The Stories of My Best Shots #24, Bennett’s Butterflyfish

A family of incredibly beautiful fishes are the butterfly fish. These fishes are found all over the tropics, in great diversity, and some species range to warm temperate waters, like Sydney. Okinawa, were I lived and dived for 5 years, has a fantastic set of these fishes. Often they would hang out in rather shallow areas, like this Bennett’s Butterflyfish which I captured in a depth of less than 2 meters at Cape Maeda. Many species of butterfly fishes have a yellow ground color. Often, they also show an eye stripe, which obscures the actual eye, and a fake eye spot on the tail base, meant to confuse predators. All of this can be seen in this lovely species.