Canary damselfish

Photo: Francois Libert · CC BY-NC-SA

The canary damselfish is a small, vivid yellow-orange species that hovers in dense clouds above reef structures and wreck superstructures throughout the warmer months. At the Secchia, hundreds of individuals form a perpetual yellow haze above the highest points of the wreck, feeding on zooplankton carried in the current. They are intensely territorial during the breeding season (spring to summer), when males clear patches of hull surface, fan eggs obsessively, and aggressively drive away fish many times their own size.