Rare Fish Resurfaces After 15 Years in Australian Kelp

Marine biologist Océane Attlan had about three seconds of confusion before her brain caught up with what her eyes were seeing underwater.

Swimming through a kelp forest near Albany, Western Australia, she spotted a tiny fish with bright colors and radiating lines around its eyes. It looked familiar, but naming it felt impossible, like spotting someone you went to school with decades ago.

Then it clicked. She was looking at a Braun's wrasse, a fish so rare it had only been recorded once since scientists discovered it in 1996. No one had seen the species since 2009.

"We were kind of joking about it," Attlan said about the possibility of spotting one during their University of Western Australia survey. "Keep an eye open in case we see this fish!"

The encounter happened on the last dive of a four-day expedition studying kelp forests. Of course, it was the only dive where Attlan didn't have a camera. She quickly flagged down fellow researcher Dr. Albert Pessarrodona, who managed to snap two photos before the six-centimeter fish vanished back into the seaweed.

Attlan describes the Braun's wrasse as cryptic and shy, hiding among the kelp in what she calls a "luxurious" forest. The species lives in one of the smallest geographic ranges of any temperate fish in Australia, making every sighting count.

The Bright Side

This rediscovery carries weight beyond just checking a box on a species list. Recent marine heatwaves have hammered Australia's southwest coast, and scientists worried the tiny wrasse might have disappeared for good. Finding one alive in its rocky reef habitat suggests the species weathered the temperature spikes.

The fish calls the Great Southern Reef home, an 8,000-kilometer ecosystem stretching along Australia's southern coastline. This massive underwater world hosts countless species found nowhere else on Earth.

Fish ecologist Culum Brown from Macquarie University says discoveries like this happen more often than people think. Hundreds of new species get described worldwide every year. His advice to divers is simple: spend time underwater, sit still, and watch. You might see something no one else ever has.

The two photos made their way to a fish identification platform, where curators from the Western Australian Museum and the Tasmania-based researcher who last spotted the species in 2009 all confirmed the identification. Now the images may inspire other divers to search those kelp forests more carefully.

Sometimes the rarest treasures are the ones that never really left.