Ballan Wrasse (Labrus bergylta): The Kelp Forest's Cleaning Foreman
Europe's biggest wrasse rules the kelp rocks: nest-building, sex-changing, shell-crushing — and now conscripted onto salmon farms as a cleanerfish. Full profile.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
8 articles
Europe's biggest wrasse rules the kelp rocks: nest-building, sex-changing, shell-crushing — and now conscripted onto salmon farms as a cleanerfish. Full profile.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Meet the corkwing wrasse: a small nest-building cleanerfish of Europe's kelp forests, now caught at scale for salmon farms — biology, ID marks, reef role.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The goldsinny wrasse is the most abundant small wrasse on Europe's kelp coasts — a parasite cleaner, nest guard and aquaculture conscript. Full species profile.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The rock wrasse (Halichoeres semicinctus) changes sex, colour and career over one lifetime on Southern California's kelp reefs – a full species profile.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Meet the eastern blue groper, the friendly, urchin-crunching giant wrasse of New South Wales reefs — every adult blue male began life as a female.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The California sheephead is a sex-changing kelp-forest wrasse whose jaws keep sea urchins in check. Learn its life history, role and recovery story.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The señorita is a small California wrasse that runs cleaning stations, swarms in glittering schools and buries itself in sand at night. Meet the kelp forest's hygienist.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·

Meet the western blue groper — Western Australia's giant blue wrasse of the kelp reefs, an urchin-eating patriarch that can live more than half a century.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·