The Reef Cornetfish, Fistularia commersonii Rüppell, 1838, New to the California Marine Fish Fauna

I report here on several sightings in southern California of the reef cornetfish, Fistularia commersonii Ruppell, 1838. These records mark the first time this species has been reported from California marine waters. Mr. Bill Powers reported an unverified sighting on 7 November 2015 at Little Flower Reef, San Clemente Island (32u50.399'N, 118u22.136'W). Mr. Powers was diving over a sand-shell hash slope adjacent to a vertical rock wall in about 12 m of water. The approximately onemeter-long fish was more or less motionless and Mr. Powers was able to observe it for several minutes, eventually approaching and touching it. Mr. Powers reports that the fish was green in color with blue spots and stripes and had a long filament extending from its caudal fin. This fish was not photographed. A second sighting was made by Ms. Sandy Dildine on 12 November 2015 within Crescent Bay, Laguna Beach (33u32.7'N, 117u48.3'W) in 7 m of water with surface water temperature at this site of about 20uC. This approximately one-meter-long fish was slowly swimming just above the bottom. Photographs and videos of this fish taken on 12 and 13 November 2015 show a green fish with blue spots and stripes. Ms. Dildine noted that when the fish was more or less motionless it had a series of dark bars along its body as well as bright, light blue spots and stripes (Fig. 1). When actively swimming, the bars of this individual quickly disappeared and the stripes and spots became darker (Fig. 2). Ms. Dildine also observed what was likely the same individual within the same circumscribed area (of about 10 m) on 19, 20, and 22 November 2015. In these instances, the fish was associated with an aggregation of blacksmith, Chromis punctipinnis (Cooper, 1863). Three cornetfish species live in the Pacific Ocean: Fistularia commersonii Ruppell, 1838, reef cornetfish; Fistularia corneta Gilbert & Starks, 1904, deepwater cornetfish; and Fistularia petimba Lacepede, 1803, red cornetfish. All range widely in the Indo-Pacific (F. petimba is also found in the Atlantic Ocean). In the eastern Pacific, Fistularia corneta occurs as far north as Huntington Beach, southern California (Curtis and Herbinson 2001) and southwards to Callao, Peru (Chirichigno and Velez 1998), including the Gulf of California (Fischer et al. 1995) and Islas Galapagos (Grove and Lavenberg 1997). Fistularia petimba is absent from the eastern Pacific (Nakabo 2002). Of these taxa, F. commersonii is the only species that is green with blue spots and stripes (Thomson et al. 2000, Robertson and Allen 2015) as F. corneta is orange or brown with pink dorsal, anal, and caudal fins (Robertson and Allen 2015) and F. petimba is red to orange-brown (Kells and Carpenter 2011). Thus, based on color and pattern, it is highly likely that the San Clemente Island and Laguna Beach individuals are F. commersonii. These California sightings extend the eastern Pacific range to southern California. The previous northernmost range was Bahia Magdalena (Thomson et al. 2000) to Iquique, northern Chile (Sielfeld et al. 2010), including the Gulf of California (Fischer et al. 1995) and Islas Galapagos (Grove and Lavenberg 1997). They have been reported from surface waters to depths of 132 m (Mundy 2005). This species reaches a maximum length of 1.6 m (Fischer et al. 1995). Bull. Southern California Acad. Sci. 115(1), 2016, pp. 81–83 E Southern California Academy of Sciences, 2016