Photos by Pierre Niehaus
Speckled klipfish are the second-most common klipfish after the super klipfish Clinus superciliosus, often outnumbering it in deeper waters. As with many klipfish the colour variability is impressive, and individuals can be anything from a bright yellow through oranges, reds, browns to nearly black. While most have a pattern of numerous broken vertical bars, some are uniformly coloured. The fish in the photos by Pierre shows a fish which somehow could not make up its mind, starting with a uniform body, then abruptly changing to the common pattern.
While many klipfish can change the intensity of their colour - for example, they become paler when kept in a white bucket or pale-bottomed fish tank, it is not certain whether they can readily change colour at will. I tried to find out a few years ago, keeping some klipfish in a tank having a bottom, sides and fake plants of a single colour, but none changed colour, even after a few weeks. It is most likely that they adopt a colour on growing up; many juveniles are born white, then usually are uniform red before adapting their "chosen" adult colouration. This is however not certain, and it may also be that over time some fish adapted better to a specific environment if they were of a similar colour, and thus genetically drifted slightly from each other, with different coloured individuals not mating simply because they would not meet. This, again, is not certain.
See "Coastal fishes of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay", available from SURG, for more details about the speckled klipfish and its colour and pattern variations.
Smiths' Sea Fishes, MM Smith and PC Heemstra, 1986.
Two Oceans, a guide to the marine life of Southern Africa, GM Branch, CL Griffiths, ML Branch and LE Beckley, 1994.
Coastal fishes of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay, a divers' identification guide, G Zsilavecz, 2005.