Of all the creatures that make their homes on coral reefs, none are more active or obvious than the reef fish. Perhaps more than any other single components of the coral reef community, the reef fish provide the best opportunity to observe essential features of coral reef ecology.
The high diversity of the reef fish communities in the coral reefs is maintained mainly by the complexity of these coral reefs that provide different ways for fishes to feed, live and reproduce. Just as many as the reef fish species numbers, there are different ways of hunting, feeding, hiding, reproducing and living.
The most striking feature by far of reef fish is their diversity, in terms of both species number and the range of morphologies. An estimated four thousand or 18 percent of all species of fish live on coral reefs and associated habitats of the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and this number continues to increase as new exploratory surveys are done.
This high diversity in reef fish species is partly due to the fact that coral reefs provide a wide variety of habitats, each with its own set of characteristic species. Differences in the degree of proximity to the coast as well as exposure to wave action, currents, light levels, the amount of algae, plankton and other food, and the abundance, shape, and varieties of coral and other shelter combine to create a large variety of different places to be exploited by the multitude of reef fish. These places are occupied by random assemblages of a usually large number of reef fish species.
Coral reef fish are of considerable economic value to the adjacent coastal cities. And there are also professional and recreational fisheries in developing and developed countries around the world, and there are some target selected high value species.
