Foxfish

The foxfish is brown, red, or orange with two spots on the back. When foxfish are juveniles, they are brown and have three yellow patches with a black area around the pectoral fin.[3]

Foxfish are typically found living under ledges and in caves.[3] It is a long lived species which may attain ages of 60 or more years. Foxfish are protogynous hermaphrodites, and they spawn several times during the late spring and the summer.[4] They form distinct pairs when breeding.[2]

The foxfish is caught as bycatch in trawl fisheries off the coasts of New South Wales and Western Australia. In Western Australia it is a quarry for recreational anglers and the state applies bag limits. It is also taken for the aquarium trade and is prized in the United States.[4]

Bodianus frenchii was formally described in 1879 as Cossyphus frenchii by Carl Benjamin Klunzinger with the type locality given as King George Sound, Western Australia.[5] The specific name honours Herr French, who was an assistant to Dr V. Muller, who was the collector of many types of Australian fishes described by Klunzinger.[4] The vernacular name, "foxfish", is thought to be taken from the misapplied binomial Bodianus vulpinus, as to most eyes this fish bears no resemblance to a fox.[4]

There is a gap in the distribution of the foxfish off the coast of Victoria and the eastern and western populations show morphological differences and may be separated into different species.[4]

• "Bodianus frenchii". Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Retrieved 18 April 2006.
• Froese, Rainer; Pauly, Daniel (eds.) (2005). "Bodianus frenchii" in FishBase. November 2005 version.