Each scale has a black outline. The fish has red fins and a red belly. Red is probably the color that you notice first when you see this fish. Also notice the pattern of lines on its gray face and the yellow spot above its eye. Parrotfishes get their names from their parrot-like mouths.
Parrotfishes have strong teeth that resemble a parrot s bill.
These strong, sharp teeth allow the parrotfishes to scrape algae from rocks and corals. But the parrotfishes can t digest the ground-up skeleton. That s right, a lot of the sand around islands in the Caribbean came out of the back end of a parrotfish. A single parrotfish can produce hundreds of pounds of sand during its lifetime. Several common coral-reef animals surround this Stoplight Parrotfish.