Grass emperors are browny-grey with darker brown blotches and streaks along their sides. They have olive cheeks covered with white speckles, their pectoral fins are tinged with blue, and all other fins are tinged with pink. They also have fine blue lines radiating from their eyes, with some crossing the snout.

Album: Fish Identification

Categories: Animals

Red Throat Emperor have a silver to pale greyish-brown body, with a reddish head and sometimes with 8-9 darker bars; pectoral-fin base bright red; fins pale to reddish, spinous dorsal- and anal-fin membranes often bright red; red streak often present from snout to upper gill cover; lips often reddish; centre of each scale usually dark.

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Spangled Emperor have Blue bands orbars (not spots) on cheek radiating out from eyes, on a gold background. Blue spots on scales along the flanks.

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Flathead are notable for their unusual body shape, upon which their hunting strategy is based. Flathead are dorsally compressed, meaning their body is wide but flattened and very low in height. Both eyes are on the top of the flattened head, giving excellent binocular vision to attack overhead prey. The effect is somewhat similar to flounder. In contrast to flounder however, flathead are much more elongated, the tail remains vertical, and the mouth is large, wide and symmetrical. Flathead use this body structure to hide in sand (their body colour changes to match their background), with only their eyes visible, and explode upwards and outwards to engulf small fish and prawns as they drift over the hidden flathead.

The dusky flathead can be distinguished from other flathead by a row of fine brown spots on the pectoral fins.

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Barred Javelin have a golden-green back, silvery belly with traces of brown vertical bars. The juvenile has a brilliant silvery green back with golden silver sides and a silvery white belly, with 12 or more faint vertical bars that comprise small dark brown spots or irregular blotches.

Album: Fish Identification

Categories: Animals

Album: Fish Identification

Categories: Animals

Silver Javelin Fish grows to 60cm. It can be distinguished from the Barred Javelin Fish by spots that on the Silver are scattered in their distribution and not arranged in a bar type fashion like the Barred Javelin Fish. Also as the Barred Javelin Fish gets mature it develops a golden, green back whereas the Silver Javelin remains a darker silver.

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The black jewfish is a large long-bodied fish. They are black to bronze colour on top with silvery sides and a yellow underbelly. They have dark pectoral, pelvic and anal fins. As a juvenile they have many black spots on the upper half of the body as well as the caudal fin. They derive the name black jewfish partly because are they are darker than their southern cousins the mulloway (Argyrosomus hololepidotus) but more so because they go a darker, blacker shade when they are dead.

Album: Fish Identification

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Queensland School Mackerel, like all Mackerel, have an elongated body with pointed noses and mouth full of very sharp teeth. They have a silvery grey body, that is bluey green above the lateral line. They are often confused with the spotted Mackerel, however can be distinguished by the blotches on the School Mackerel are poorly defined and less than the spotted Mackerel, also the first dorsal fin which is jet black has a large contrasting white section between the sixth and seventh spine which the spotted Mackerel does not have.

Album: Fish Identification

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Spanish mackerel have long, narrow bodies. They are dark blue along the top, becoming silvery towards the centre and underneath. They have a banded pattern, narrow dark blue or black bars running vertically along the body, narrower than the bars on their relative, the broad-barred Spanish mackerel (also called the grey mackerel).

Album: Fish Identification

Categories: Animals