The taungan or bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) can grow up to 50 kilos; it is the largest parrotfish in the world!
Unfortunately, after interviewing fishers, the Haribon Foundation and the Darwin Initiative Project 19-020 found that the number of kilograms of taungan caught per day had gone down by 88% since the 1950s! This is a Vulnerable species according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species authority.
It used to be common, swimming in schools in coral reefs, but now it is rare and found in isolation. It eats and scrapes algae and bacteria, helping to control algal overgrowth and thus allows healthy growth of corals. Taungan can remove five tons of coral rock every year. This washes ashore and becomes the beautiful white sand we enjoy in beaches.
Do your part this World Oceans Day (June 8) & The Coral Triangle Day (June 9) by learning more about our seas, the fish that live there, and what communities are doing to help. Support the conservation of fish species and food supply by donating to Haribon today:
http://ushare.unionbankph.com/haribon/
Read the newly published research by the Haribon Foundation, Newcastle University UK under the Darwin Initiative Programme of the UK on PLOS ONE:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0155752
Bumphead Parrotfish photo by Klaus Stiefel. Creative Commons license CC BY-NC 2.0.
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