Endangered
The last of the fish week.
This is the only Cardinalfish that isn't nocturnal. They all have unique patterns of dots and while not exactly the same, they do all seem to have the same number of stripes. They are popular aquarium fish, which is the main reason they are endangered. It is estimated that 600,000-900,000 are collected every year. Unfortunately too, as with many similar pets, they are often claimed to be captive bred but are in actuality wild caught. There was an attempt to make it so that there would be a serious limit on the numbers of wild fish that could be sold into aquarium trade. Indonesia, where the fish are from, refused to support the suggestion by CITES, so there still is no ban or limit on that. This is another species where the males use mouth-brooding. It is thought that he does not eat the whole time he is carrying them around, which is about a month.
I posted this to Twitter, and then remembered that I forgot to add the pectoral fin on the picture. Kind of need those fins to be able to swim properly! This one has all its fins. I usually catch that as soon as I've texted my bff ladybug and mom. There is a reason I text them the picture first. I seem to notice problems after I've shared a picture, not before. If I text them, I notice it and I haven't gotten it out in general public with its problem. I think this fish looks very elegant. When I saw it I knew I wanted to do it in charcoal because it is so bold even in black and white that it could really look impressive even without colour. I am pretty sure I know what I am doing for next week, but just in general, not all 7 animals. I am probably going to do a week of frogs, then do random animals. I may instead do a week of random animals and then a week of frogs. We will see what mood I'm in tomorrow. I also kind of want to do a few extinct animals that would have been well out of my date range during last year's paintings. I may save that and do a week of long extinct animals at some point. Early on it is sort of overwhelming how many animals you have to pick from, even more so now since there are more endangered animals than there are critically endangered ones.