Brown hogfish

Bodianus eclancheri is a fish of the wrasse family (Labridae), described by Valenciennes in 1846 under the name Cossyphus eclancheri ^[1]. In Peru it is called «vieja negrilla» ^[2]. Its global category on the IUCN Red List is Least Concern ^[3]. On the Peruvian coast, however, spearfishers interviewed in 2020 describe a decline so steep that by the 2010s they found it almost only at a small group of remote islands off Lima ^[4].

According to Jordan and Evermann (1896), the genus name, Bodianus, comes from Bodiano or Pudiano, words derived from the Portuguese pudor, which means modesty ^[5]. The epithet eclancheri commemorates M. L'Eclancher, that is, Charles René Augustin Leclancher (1804–1857), a surgeon in the French navy ^[5].

Its body is moderately deep and flattened from side to side, and the head is big and ends in a point; the long, compressed teeth recall incisors ^[5]. The single dorsal fin bears 12 spines, and both it and the anal fin end at the back in thread-like lobes; the lower part of the first gill arch holds 9 or 10 rakers ^[5]. Large individuals reach 61 cm total length, though the common size is around 40 cm ^[5].

Its colouring varies with size and sex and may be brown, black, red or orange; fish that are black from end to end account for under 5 % of individuals ^[5]. The old photographs gathered to test fishers' accounts include multicoloured individuals caught at Cabo Blanco in 1992 ^[4].

It occurs in the southeast Pacific between Ecuador and central Chile; it has its origin in the Peru-Chile biogeographic province and also reaches the cooler-water areas of the Galápagos Islands ^[5]. It lives on reefs and has been recorded from 5 to 46 m deep ^[5].

An interview-based study groups it with the species endemic to the Humboldt Current and a few parts of Galápagos; it notes that Chilean records are scarce, confined to the far north and clustered in El Niño years, and that in Galápagos it turns up only in very localised spots ^[4]. In Peru, its widest extent according to fishers was in the 1980s: some 860 km of coast spread over 6 fishing grounds, from Sechura to Paracas ^[4].

It is a protogynous sequential hermaphrodite: individuals first mature as females and some later become males ^[6]. In the Galápagos archipelago, males hold no territories and spawn in groups; females mate every day and spend little time on social and mating activity; fertilisation is external and there is no care of the young ^[6]. Its eggs are released into the water column ^[5].

In the same study, males spent 70.2 % of their time feeding and females 77.3 %, unlike two other species of the genus in which territorial males eat far less than females ^[6]. The author's reading is that, because these males compete by producing as much sperm as possible, their reproductive success, like that of females, seems to depend mainly on the energy they can put into gametes and growth ^[6].

Adults eat a wide variety of invertebrates as well as algae, and their trophic level estimated from diet is 2.7 ^[5]. In Galápagos, both males and females devote the greater part of their time to searching for food ^[6].

Its global category on the IUCN Red List is Least Concern, according to a 2007 assessment ^[3].

In Peru the picture is different. From interviews with 40 spearfishers carried out in 2020, the species' usual fishing area shrank from 860 km of coast in the 1980s to just 2 km in the 2010s, in practice a 100 % reduction ^[4]. Since it is rare in Chile and occupies few places in Galápagos, the authors warn that this loss may reflect a critical reduction of its whole distribution, and they count it among the species needing strict measures such as fishing closures ^[4]. A productivity and susceptibility analysis gave it a high vulnerability to overfishing (V = 2.05) ^[7].

In the Mar Tropical de Grau National Reserve, the management plan lists it among the rocky-reef species highly threatened as a result of poor spearfishing practices and other fishing gear ^[2]. The plan prohibits taking it in the Arrecifes de Punta Sal ^[2], Cabo Blanco – El Ñuro ^[2] and Isla Foca sectors ^[2].

In Peru it is taken mostly by spearfishers, either holding their breath or breathing air from a hookah compressor ^[4]. It is also sold as an aquarium fish ^[5].

According to spearfishers interviewed in 2020, in the 2010s it was still turning up regularly only at Hormigas de Afuera, some uninhabited islets and reefs lying 62 km off the coast of Lima ^[4]. The 2026 management plan of the Mar Tropical de Grau National Reserve mentions it among the threatened reef species of the Arrecifes de Punta Sal sector ^[2] and among those of the Isla Foca sector, where taking it is prohibited ^[2].