Neopomacentrus cyanomos

Fishes

The Regal Damselfish or Regal Demoiselle (Neopomacentrus cyanomos) is a coral reef fish with a slender ovate, moderately compressed body, bluish-green in color.  It has a wide Indo-Pacific native distribution, from the Red Sea to Madagascar and Japan to New Caledonia and Australia.  In June-September 2013, on reefs south of Veracruz, Mexico, divers made 43 numerous sightings of an unusual damselfish.  This was the first record of this fish from the Atlantic Ocean.  Its range continued to expand. and in 2017, it was seen by divers on the US Gulf of Mexico coast from Texas to St. Andrews Bay, Florida.  Most sightings have occurred at artificial reefs and oil platforms (Bennett et al. 2018; USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Program 2018). By 2020, Regal Damselfish were  seen on the Atlantic Coast of the Florida Keys, and now range north to the vicinity of Palm Beach. Florida. A separate introduction occurred in Diego Martin, Trinidad.  Both invasions began in the vicinity of oil exploration platforms, and both populations have high genetic diversity,  The occurrence of two genetically diverse and widely separated populations, in the vicinity of oil platforms, in the western Gulf of Mexico and the eastern Caribbean, in Trinidad, supports the role of oil platforms as a vector (Robertson et al. 2021a). This fish tolerates temperatures at least as low as 22°C. and salinities at least as low as 22 PSU.  This fish occurs in large numbers around artificial structures, but its impacts are unknown.