The New Zealand banded wrasse or yellow-saddled wrasse, Notolabrus fucicola, is a wrasse of the genus Notolabrus, found in the Eastern Indian Ocean, off eastern Australia and all around New Zealand on rocky weedy reef areas. Its length is between 30 and 60 cm and large specimens, which might be over 25 years old, weigh almost 5 kg. Aging work in New Zealand suggested banded wrasse can live to at least 35 years.
The New Zealand banded wrasse is the largest wrasse in New Zealand waters. It is a moderately deep-bodied fish of variable colouring, young being reddish-brown mottled with green and orange, whilst adults are green-brown tinged with purple with indistinct yellowish vertical bars on the body and fins. They are a generalist predator with powerful canine teeth that enable them to remove chitons, limpets and barnacles from rocks. They can also crush and eat mollusks, crabs and sea urchins. There are size specific changes in their diet. Small fish (100-180 mm) eat mostly amphipods and isopods, whereas larger fish (> 180 mm) eat mainly bivalves, crabs, and gastropods.
Banded wrasse are asynchronous spawners and follow the typical labrid spring-summer seasonal pattern of reproduction from July to December. Compared with other New Zealand labrids that are protogynous hermaphrodites, the banded wrasse was found to be a secondary gonochorist, where individuals change sex before maturation. It is a dichromatic species but not sexually dimorphic. It is also monandric where only one morphological male type is present. Despite finding no transitional gonads, it is still possible that particular environmental or social conditions could induce sex change in at least a small proportion of fishes.
These fish may be caught on a handline and fight well.
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