Good morning from Curacao! I have four photos for you today showing a behavior we see quite often called “Shadowing or Shadow Hunting”. This is a unique hunting technique that usually involves a trumpetfish (the long fish) slowly swimming behind or on top of a large herbivorous fish, using the larger fish as camouflage, then coiling its body into an s-shape and rapidly lunging at prey when an opportune moment to strike presents itself. Trumpetfish seem to select a shadowing fish based on color but this doesn’t always hold true as you can see from the photos above: red-brown trumpetfish tend to shadow brownish fish like grouper, blue-grey trumpetfish shadow schools of blue fish like blue tang, and occasionally even scuba divers. Trumpetfish are carnivores that feed on fish and crustaceans. They are ambush predators so they rely on camouflage and stealth to allow them to get close to potential prey.
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