Rainbow Runner

Photo: Bjarne Amstrup · CC BY-NC

Rainbow runners occur in large fast-moving schools at Shark Point Addu, their iridescent blue and yellow lateral stripes blurring into a metallic sheen as schools of 50 to several hundred individuals sweep past in the current. They are highly active pelagic predators that use the point's current to accelerate into schools of smaller fish, and witnessing a coordinated rainbow runner feeding attack — where the school fragments and reassembles multiple times in rapid succession — is one of the most dynamic fish-behaviour spectacles in Maldivian diving. Their energetic presence at the point signals the overall pelagic productivity of the outer reef environment.