Good morning from the Caribbean!! IF your like me, you just got to work and are just sitting there starring at your computer wondering why your head is spinning and asking yourself, “where did the weekend go”???? It’s like some cruel magic trick, you wait all week for your weekends and then “POOF” they are gone!! I was thinking, we as a human race need to implement a new work strategy, we will all work super hard on the weekends even overtime if needed and then we get the week off, tell me that doesn’t sound better!! My weekend was of course crazy busy again and so much in fact I can hardly remember what I did on Saturday?? Yesterday, Sunday I left the house at 6:30 am on my mountain bike and did a very fast paced two and a half hour ride to the North coast and back, that’s around 35 miles. After that Stijn came over and we found two more different gecko’s in my yard for my “reptiles of Curacao” collection and took them to work to be photographed. After they were photographed we took them all the way back out to the desert and released them in a beautiful spot with lots of old wood. We then met a few friends at Substation and went on a fun reef dive, I spent the whole time just cleaning up the reef and not taking my camera for once. After the dive we worked in my yard getting it cleaned up and finally at 4:30 took the dogs out for a long two hour hike around the salt ponds, talk about a man who was wiped out when I got home!!! So tell me what you all did this weekend for once. Here is a sleek Trumpetfish I found a few days ago and forgot to send it to you all. These fish are everywhere you look here in Curacao! They can be found in electric yellow, blue as you see above and even red, and I am still trying to get all the colors into one photo!! Trumpetfish, Aulostomus maculatus, are long bodied fish with upturned mouths, that often swim vertically while trying to blend with vertical coral, like sea rods, sea pens, and pipe sponges. Trumpetfish occur in waters between 0.5 and 30 meters (1.6 and appr. 100 feet) deep and can grow to 40 to 80 cm (appr. 15 to 31+ inches) in length. They are sometimes locally abundant over coral atoll reefs or in lagoons, where they may be caught even in areas of severe wave action. The spawning habits of the trumpetfish are unknown, but in the region around Madeira, it is known that the females have mature eggs from March to JuneTrumpetfish are closely related to cornetfish. Trumpetfish can be a bit more than 36 inches (3 ft) long and have greatly elongated bodies with small jaws at the front end of a long, tubular snout. The gills are pectinate, resembling the teeth of a comb, and a soft dorsal fin is found near the tail fin. A series of spines occurs in front of the dorsal fin. Trumpetfish vary in color from dark brown to greenish but also yellow in some areas. A black streak, sometimes reduced to a dark spot, occurs along the jaw, and a pair of dark spots is sometimes found on the base of the tail fin. Trumpetfish swim slowly, sneaking up on unsuspecting prey, or lying motionless like a floating stick, swaying back and forth with the wave action of the water. They are adept at camouflaging themselves and often swim in alignment with other larger fishes. They feed almost exclusively on small fish, such as wrasses and atheriniformes,by sucking them suddenly into their small mouths. There is another fish similar to a Trumpetfish called a Cornetfish often mistaken for a trumpetfish. The key visible difference is the tail, pointed “T” in a cornetfish and rounded fan-shaped in a trumpetfish. In the years I have been here in Curacao I have only seen two cornetfish, they are so hard to find and very scared of their own shadows!! Trumpetfish make up the genus Aulostomus of the family Aulostomidae. Have a wonderful day folks, we have the film crew from “Wild About Animals” showing up here soon so I need to get ready!!! Barry MORE: Trumpetfish, Aulostomus maculatus, Long Fish