One of a kind video of a dancing wrasse

Nezmo · Feb 3, 2018

Anyone ever see a wrasse do this? It must be some kind of mating ritual, but there were no females around, except my wife Fran, who shot this guy, she called "Wet Willie", in action. We're guessing this is a circle-cheek wrasse, anyone know for sure? This was shot in Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. An island surrounded by a barrier reef, and home to many species of wrasses.
The amazing thing is he kept this up for as long as he did, and that Fran remained composed enough to shoot it. I finished the clip with some shots from some of our other trips of animals keeping up with the music.

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easternreefer · Feb 3, 2018

great shots beautiful video

DracoKat · Feb 3, 2018

that last fish made me smile with his teeth and wave,lol.

and I've never seen my wrasse dance like that

5altkreep · Feb 3, 2018

Wow, great video! Thanks for sharing!

Fishhands · Feb 3, 2018

Fantastic video! Subscribed.

Nezmo · Feb 3, 2018

DracoKat said:
that last fish made me smile with his teeth and wave,lol.

and I've never seen my wrasse dance like that

The last fish was a young parrotfish from the Caribbean that I woke up and he just gave me a friendly smile and a wave. I've seen thousands of wrasses on various reefs, and this was the only one that danced like this.

Nezmo · Feb 3, 2018

Fishhands said:
Fantastic video! Subscribed.

Thanks for subscribing, I'm working on lots of cool new videos, so stay tuned! I'm finishing one about amazing transformations, like from juvenile angels to adults, or sex changing wrasses.

Fishhands · Feb 3, 2018

Nezmo said:
Thanks for subscribing, I'm working on lots of cool new videos, so stay tuned! I'm finishing one about amazing transformations, like from juvenile angels to adults, or sex changing wrasses.

I love wrasses. I just wish my tank was bigger so i could keep various ones. Would really like a leopard and a dragon to show up in one of your videos. Wet Willie set the bar pretty high though. He has better moves than me. My other half says i dance like Ellen. She doesn't get it.

Nezmo · Feb 3, 2018

Wrasses are the hardest fish to shoot because they never stop swimming, but I accept the challenge and pursue them. I have some footage of leopard wrasses from Bali that I will be adding when I do my Immersion series from there. I have tons of shots of dragon wrasses in all phases and there will be lots of that in the future also. Dragons are cool because they swim like a leaf flopping around in the current, even the adults keep swimming like that! It's also cool how they keep picking up rocks of all sizes and turning them over.

User1 · Feb 3, 2018

Nice video - always love seeing dive videos - makes me want to go grab my gear! If you have more video of the wrasse and surrounding video before the edit, maybe review it again. I've seen odd things like that only to go back and find the actual fish the dancer was trying to attract.

Nezmo · Feb 3, 2018

saf1 said:
Nice video - always love seeing dive videos - makes me want to go grab my gear! If you have more video of the wrasse and surrounding video before the edit, maybe review it again. I've seen odd things like that only to go back and find the actual fish the dancer was trying to attract.

I went through all the footage, and he seemed to be the only one of these around. This was shot in the lagoon inside the barrier reef. The coral patches were scattered with sandy areas in between the coral. Each of these was like a mini-city, and had the individual species that lived on that patch of coral. All of this species of wrasse I saw in other "mini-cities" were paired up, this was the only bachelor.
They weren't like other species of wrasse where there was a harem of females, a few males and a supermale overseeing the lot, these seemed to be mated pairs. I think he was hitting on my wife as he seemed to direct his attention directly at her.

Nezmo · Feb 4, 2018

Fishhands said:
I love wrasses. I just wish my tank was bigger so i could keep various ones. Would really like a leopard and a dragon to show up in one of your videos. Wet Willie set the bar pretty high though. He has better moves than me. My other half says i dance like Ellen. She doesn't get it.

Since you like wrasses so much, I've added 10 pics of wrasses capped from some of our videos that you may not have seen. Who can ID them?

Fishhands · Feb 4, 2018

#2 five stripe,#4 moon,#9 christmas,#10 klunzinger

Nezmo · Feb 4, 2018

Fishhands said:
#2 five stripe,#4 moon,#9 christmas,#10 klunzinger

I'm not an expert, but I believe you have #4 and#10 wrong. I've never been to the Red Sea, so can't be a Klunzinger's.

Fishhands · Feb 4, 2018

Just some guesses. Im not an expert either. Maybe @evolved or @eatbreakfast can shed some light in these.

Nezmo · Feb 4, 2018

My guesses would be: #1 Three spot wrasse shot in Rarotonga, Cooks Islands
#2 Five stripe wrasse shot in Fiji
#3 Twinspot or clown Wrasse (this was tricky because it just lost it's 2 orange saddles and started the next color phase. shot in Rarotonga
#4 Male sunset wrasse shot in Rarotonga
#5 Richard's wrasse shot in Fiji
#6 Slingjaw wrasse in darker color phase, shot in Fiji, these guys change color at the drop of a hat.
#7 Hardwicke supermale shot in Fiji, even has an "M" on his side to show he's a male.
#8 Maori wrasse shot in Fiji. This one I'm not sure about since it's still developing, and doesn't have the tripletail yet.
#9 Christmas wrasse shot in Hawaii, there are several called Christmas, I believe this is also called the ladder wrasse, or the trilobatum.
#10 Zigzag wrasse supermale shot in Bali. This was one of the most colorful of all the wrasses I've seen on the reefs.
Maybe someone can confirm or correct me on these.