University of Western Australia\u00a0<\/a>when a small, brightly coloured fish caught her attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cWhen it appeared, it took me a few seconds to register what I was seeing, because the species is so rarely encountered,\u201d says Attlan in a statement. \u201cWithin moments I realised it was something special.\u201d<\/p>\n
She had just laid eyes on a Braun\u2019s wrasse\u00a0(Pictilabrus braun).\u00a0This diminutive fish grows no larger than 7.5cm long and is incredibly rare. Since its discovery in 1996, it has only been officially recorded once.<\/p>\n
Within moments I realised it was something special.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got very excited, but out of nine dives that happened to be the only one where I didn\u2019t have a camera on me, so I needed to find a buddy to quickly try to get some shots,” she says. <\/p>\n
Luckily, she managed to find a colleague with a camera before the fish vanished into the cover of the kelp. The photos helped them confirm their suspicions that this was a Braun\u2019s wrasse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This was an exciting moment but it was also a relief to set eyes on the rare creature. \u201cThe marine heatwaves that have struck south-west Australia in recent years had raised concerns that the species had gone extinct, making this confirmed sighting particularly important,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
\u201cDocumenting rare and endemic species is a crucial step toward understanding, protecting and managing these unique underwater environments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Top image: Braun’s wrasse. Credit: The University of Western Australia\u00a0<\/p>\n
More amazing wildlife stories from around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the ocean, you never know what you might see. This is something that marine ecology researcher Oc\u00e9ane…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-278555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}