Everyone loves sharks, octopuses, and lobsters, but what about some of our more underrated fish? Check out these under-the-radar critters that are more JAW-some than you realize!
Found in one of the first habitats at the Aquarium, after the entrance to our Canadian Waters gallery, these adorably small sunfish are found all over North America in streams and lakes. If you visit a body of water in Ontario and keep still, you might just have one swim up to you out of curiosity! They have a beautiful blue and purple color, with some orange along the sides during mating season. Bluegill are vital to many food webs, as they prey on invertebrates, and are found to be prey to a wide variety of larger animals like bass, muskellunge, perch, walleye, herons, and even otters!
These slippery creatures are found in Canadian Waters. You might not notice them until you look closely, as they're experts at camouflage! These fish used to be very abundant in rivers, but in Canada, their population has dwindled because of the construction of hydroelectric dams, which have blocked their migration routes.
Besides being known for their star-shaped bodies, sea stars are also known for their ability to regrow limbs!
Sea stars also have a highly unique way of eating — they expel their stomachs to the outside of their body! When they come across their prey they will expel their stomachs to digest the creature, then slurp up the digested mucus back into their central system.
These Canada natives are one of our most colorful fish. Arctic Graylings are found to spawn in rivers, lakes, and around Arctic Ocean drainages like Hudson Bay, Alberta, and British Columbia. These Canadian fish also have beautiful coloring during mating season, with males changing to bright blues, pinks, and purples.
Wrasse are named for their beak-like rostrum that’s adapted to help them feed. Males are large and have brighter color patterns, but females are significantly smaller and have duller patterns, usually white and black. These fish also undergo sequential hermaphroditism, and change sex at some point in their life.
There are approximately 129 species of butterflyfish around the world. Only a few butterflyfish are known as corallivores. Most butterflyfish feed upon marine invertebrates, such as worms and crustaceans. Some are also omnivores and feed upon algae growing between corals. These fish come in multiple color patterns and some species are known to change color at night for added protection.
You might not see these unique sharks at first glance, but if you look closely around the bottom, you might get a glimpse of our nocturnal ornate wobbegong or tasseled wobbegong. These sharks have a heavy camouflage, with brown, yellow, green, and blue-grey tones, and small flaps of skin that look a lot like coral. They’re named after a term that describes their ‘beard’—a cluster of barbels that act as sensory organs and help with added camouflage.
Typically, isopods range around 5 centimeters long, but these ocean critters are significantly larger than their pill-bug relatives. Isopods share the ability to curl up into a ball and allow their exoskeleton to protect them.
Archerfish have adapted to hunt insects and invertebrates found above the surface of the water. Archerfish shoot a stream of water out of their mouths at prey above the water surface to stun it. When this doesn't do the job, they are known to jump out of the water to catch their prey.
There's more than meets the eye to these unique jellies! Similar to many corals, this jelly has a symbiotic relationship with the algae that lives in its tissues. By lying upside-down, the jelly exposes its algae to the sun and allows it to photosynthesize! When they orient themselves upside-down in shallow water where the sunlight is intense, they are maximizing energy production.
