The Wrasse Family

No fish coloring book could be complete without a substantial section on the Wrasse family. These fish are common, plentiful, often brightly colored, and ecologically significant – an all around win for snorkeling and coloring! I’ve included the most common wrasses – Yellow and Blue headed Wrasses and Hogshead Wrasse – as well as the rarer but fantastically colored Puddingwife wrasse.

You can read about this project in the post “A Fish Journal for a six-year-old” and you can see all the posts for this project using the tag “Fish Coloring Book“.

The Yellowhead wrasse only grows to be about 5-6 inches long and likes to swim around the reef looking for food. They like to eat algae, crustaceans, such as crabs, eggs, shrimps, snails and worms.

The Bluehead wrasse only grows to be about 4-5 inches long and just like the Yellowhead wrasse, they also like to swim around the reef looking for algae, crustaceans, such as crabs, eggs, shrimps, snails and worms to eat.

Below are a collection of photos with several juvenile and Initial phase Bluehead wrasse that includes some of their color and pattern variations.

Both the Yellowhead and Bluehead Wrasses are pretty easy to spot and aren’t afraid of snorkelers or divers.

In the video below, an Initial Phase Yellowhead and a couple Juvenile Bluehead wrasses watch me play in the sand and try to snag some snacks.

When they are young (juveniles) Yellowhead and Bluehead wrasse play a very important role on the reef – they are cleaner fish who help keep all the other fish clean and healthy. This works out great for everyone – the big fish get all the itchy uncomfortable parasites off of them and the juvenile wrasse get to eat all the juicy, tasty parasites.

Although many different species of fish act as cleaner fish when they are juveniles, the Yellowhead and Bluehead wrasse are the most common cleaner fish in the Caribbean and around Florida.