What rare angel is the least owned?

[LargeAngels]

Sheol: He is doing well. For a while he would only eat brine shrimp. Trying to get some more.

[tony varrell]

I have a Joculator. Supposed to be very rare. It is quite expensive. I have it for 3 years now. beautiful fish..

[wayne in norway]

I'm amazed 49 people are claining to own Paracentropyge boylei - I've seen a lot of fish, but never one of these.

How many are in captivitiy in the US - any guesses?

[John Dawe]

That's a big NONE for P boylei in the USA, there is ONE in Japan,
theres a picture of it in the new Anglefish of the World book,

[sedgro]

I think people mis-understood the poll... the title of the thread is "What rare angel is least owned?", the title of the poll is "What hard to find angel do you have?". I think they were answering the thread question and not the poll question.

John

[Sheol]

Good,

& belated congrats. What a find!

Matthew

[bandedangel]

Originally posted by wayne in norway
I'm amazed 49 people are claining to own Paracentropyge boylei - I've seen a lot of fish, but never one of these.

How many are in captivitiy in the US - any guesses?

There has been only 15 ever collected for the trade & there's none in the U.S.

[zemuron114]

there is only one known to be alive and it is in Japan. No one in the US has one.

[LargeAngels]

And here it is.

[zemuron114]

exactly! those are so beautiful. To bad boyle doesn't collect them anymore.

[bandedangel]

no more C. hotu available - Easter has been closed down. If you have one, take good care.

[bandedangel]

no more C. hotu available - Easter has been closed down. If you have one, take good care.

[Sheol]

Does anyone even have a C. hotumarama??

Matthew

[copps]

Frank B. (of RCT) offered me his hotu pair along with all of the other things I got last year, but I passed due to their cool water requirements... They need low 70s on the high end long term, which really required a dedicated system, and that's what they got from a guy in California where they are today... aside from those I don't know of any in the US left...

[sedgro]

Off topic, but I was in Dallas, TX over the weekend and visted the "Dallas World Aquarium". They had an impressive display of rare fish based on locale. Most impressive was their Lord Howe Island tank which featured 4 of the best looking C. conspiculatus I have ever seen living in harmony. But, my point and more impressive, was the female Genicanthus semicinctus, the Lord Howe endemic Genicanthus. Not much to look at, but I bet it is the only one in the US.

[copps]

Sedgro, do they just have the one semicinctus? I know they collected those themselves... and I heard the concpics are spawning which is pretty neat!

[RGBMatt]

Originally posted by bandedangel
no more C. hotu available - Easter has been closed down. If you have one, take good care.

From Fishbase:

Distribution: Eastern Pacific: Austral (including Rapa), Pitcairn and Easter islands.

Is it possible that some may someday be collected from somewhere else in its range?

[copps]

It's possible, but they would not be flown out... Pitcairn I believe is the only other populated place they're found, an it now has less than 50 people living there and it's shrinking by the year as people move out... No flights there though, so it would have to be some sort of boat expedition...

[bandedangel]

Calif. I'm in Cali !! - wait a minute that's me!! haha

[Aadler]

So is a fish like the Boylei just that rare in the wild, or does no one think they could collect 20 of them and sell them for $4000 each? Or are they only found at protected reefs?

[copps]

Originally posted by Aadler
So is a fish like the Boylei just that rare in the wild, or does no one think they could collect 20 of them and sell them for $4000 each? Or are they only found at protected reefs?

P. boylei is only documented from Rarotonga, Cook Islands usually in below 300 feet of water. Chip Boyle runs the only dive operation and exporter there and due to health reasons has not been able to dive deep enough to collect these for I believe about three years now...

On a side note Centropyge narcosis was just recently documented for the first time outside of Rarotonga. When I met up with Rich Pyle last month in Hawaii he told me a rebreather diver in Rangiroa, Tuamotu Islands sent him a photo of one he saw...

Hopefully soon P. boylei will be found at a second location...

[sedgro]

I was lucky enough to visit Chip in the Cooks in 2003 (highly recommend going there). While he does run the only collection station there, there are plenty of other dive operators. He was still making rebreather dives then - collecting N. helfrichi - which is much larger and more purple in the Cooks. He sent me an e-mail about a year later saying that he had seen a P boylei but not collected it. Perhaps they are just rare at rebreather depths?
On a side note, he had just brought over 3 guys from Sri Lanka when I was there to increase the size of his collection operation (and was in the process of training them). I assume they are the ones collecting most of what comes from the Cooks now. He runs a top notch operation. I saw banks of healthy looking fish that were well cared for.

Copps - the G. semicinctus in Dallas was all by itself (as far as I could tell). Looked fat and healthy though. If only I could get my conspic to look as nice as theirs!

[copps]

Thanks sedgro... Is Chip's operation the only one filling tanks there? I know he had the only O2 on the island, so any rebreather or mixed gas diving would have to go through him... Anyway I'll shoot you a PM...

From what I got from speaking to Rich, these angels were not that hard to find at depth there... it's amazing listening to Rich's stories of going to 400 feet on compressed air... I did go through the angelfish collection with Rich at the Bishop Museum and saw the lectotypes of P. boylei that he collected... they looked like white freshwater discus! The narcosis still had its spot though... He let me take photos for my presentation... What a guy!

[sedgro]

The dive operator I used had a compressor for regular compressed air tanks. Chip was the only 02 producer. I think the hospital used his oxygen as well.

Interesting side note on the Cooks. Only locals can own land, everyone else leases it from them. Therefore, no big hotel chains are present. If you use google earth, you can see the giant Sheraton on Rarotonga on the south shore of the island that was never completed.

[copps]

Originally posted by sedgro
Chip was the only 02 producer. I think the hospital used his oxygen as well.

Thanks Sedgro that was it... if you're deep diving Rarotonga you're going through Chip!

Check out this stunner... looks to be an imperator-chrysurus hybrid...