Flashlight Fish - Oceana

Marine Life Encyclopedia

Ocean Fishes

Flashlight Fish

Photoblepharon Palpebratum

Distribution

Tropical latitudes in the eastern Indian and wider Pacific oceans

eCOSYSTEM/HABITAT

Rocky and coral reefs

FEEDING HABITS

Foraging predator

TAXONOMY

Order Beryciformes (squirrelfishes and relatives), Family Anomalopidae (flashlight fishes)

     

    Flashlight fish are predominately nocturnal and are only rarely observed by SCUBA divers during the day. They spend most of the daylight hours hidden in caves or holes in the reef surface. They feed at night away from the reef surface and likely use their light organs to help them locate small, planktonic prey. Like many species that produce light, the flashlight fish has a muscular skin flap that it can manipulate to reveal or hide its light. In this manner, it likely also uses its light to communicate with others of the same species and to confuse predators. This species’ ability to produce light implies that it is a descendent of a deep-sea lineage. Several of its most closely related groups still inhabit the deep sea (including fangtooths, slimeheads, and others). Though most groups of deep-sea fishes are descendents of shallow water forms, the flashlight fish seems to represent an opposite colonization.

    The flashlight fish is likely naturally rare. It is not eaten by people but is occasionally captured for use in public and private aquaria. As an inhabitant of vulnerable Pacific coral reefs, this species’ fate is tied to that of its preferred ecosystem. Destructive fishing, climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, and other problems threaten coral reefs around the world and risk the fishes and invertebrates that rely on them.

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