Genicanthus watanabei

Species of fish

Genicanthus watanabei, the blackedged angelfish or Watanabe’s angelfish, is a species of marine ray finned fish, a marine angelfish belonging to the family Pomacanthidae. It is found in the Pacific Ocean.

Genicanthus watanabei, like the other angelfishes in the genus Genicanthus, shows sexual dichromatism, the males and females show differences in colour and pattern. The males are pale blue to bluish grey on the upper third of their bodies with the lower two thirds having 8 horizontal, thin black stripes, the highest of these end in a patch of yellow colour. The females are overall light blue colour with wide black bars across their head and a black spot on the snout. In both males and females there is a wide submarginal band on the dorsal and anal fins, and on the lobes of the caudal fin. Juveniles somewhat resemble females in colour. In both sexes the forked tail narrows at its base to create a “swallow tail”. The dorsal fin contains 15 16 spines and 15 16 soft rays while the anal fin has 3 spines and 14 17 soft rays. This species attains a maximum total length of .

Genicanthus watanabei was first formally described in 1970 by the Japanese ichthyologists Fujio Yasuda and Yoshiaki Tominaga with the type locality given as Onna Beach on Okinawa. The specific name honours the Japanese ichthyologist Masao Watanabe of Waseda University in Tokyo, who originally collected this fish but identified it as Genicanthus caudovittatus.

Genicanthus watanabei is not a frequently traded species in the aquarium trade. Those specimens which do enter the trade mostly come from the Philippines and from Melanesia.