page_title: Houtman Abrolhos
section_title: Fish
hierarchical_section_title: Houtman Abrolhos / Marine fauna / Fish
caption_attribution_description: Thalassoma lunareGreat Barrier Reef, Cairns, Australia
context_page_description: The Houtman Abrolhos is a chain of 122 islands, and associated coral reefs, in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia. Nominally located at 28°43′S 113°47′E, it lies about eighty kilometres west of Geraldton, Western Australia. It is the southernmost true coral reef in the Indian Ocean, and one of the highest latitude reef systems in the world. It is one of the world's most important seabird breeding sites, and is the centre of Western Australia's largest single-species fishery, the western rock lobster fishery. It has a small seasonal population of fishermen, and a limited number of tourists are permitted for day trips, but most of the land area is off limits as conservation habitat. It is well known as the site of numerous shipwrecks, the most famous being Dutch ships Batavia, which was wrecked in 1629, and Zeewijk, wrecked in 1727.
  In July 2019 the Houtman Abrolhos was declared a national park by the Western Australian government.
context_section_description: At last count, a total of 389 species of fish have been recorded from the Houtman Abrolhos. 16 species occur in very large numbers; in decreasing order of abundance, these are:
  Pomacentrus milleri (Miller's damsel)
  Scarus schlegeli (Schlegel's parrotfish)
  Stethojulis strigiventer (stripebelly wrasse)
  Coris auricularis (western king wrasse)
  Kyphosus cornelii (western buffalo bream)
  Choerodon rubescens (baldchin groper)
  Chromis westaustralis (West Australian puller)
  Thalassoma lutescens (green moon wrasse)
  Scarus ghobban (blue-barred orange parrotfish)
  Abudefduf sexfasciatus (scissortail sergeant)
  Thalassoma lunare (moon wrasse)
  Stegastes obreptus (western gregory)
  Halichoeres brownfieldi (Brownfield's wrasse)
  Amblygobius phalaena (white-barred goby)
  Asterropteryx semipunctatus (starry goby)
  Anampses geographicus (scribbled wrasse)
  Commercially important species include Pagrus auratus (pink snapper), Choerodon rubescens (baldchin groper), Glaucosoma hebraicum (westralian dhufish) and Plectropomus leopardus (coral trout). For a complete list of fish species recorded at the Houtman Abrolhos, see List of fishes of the Houtman Abrolhos.
  About two thirds of the total number of species are tropical in distribution, the remainder being subtropical or warm-temperate. This ratio also holds for the most abundant species, eleven of the sixteen species being tropical. On the other hand, over 70% of tropical species occur in extremely low numbers, so low in fact that they are thought not to maintain breeding populations at the Abrolhos; rather, populations are maintained by larvae carried to the islands by the Leeuwin Current from populations further north.
caption: The moon wrasse, pictured here at the Great Barrier Reef, is one of the most abundant fish species at the Houtman Abrolhos
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