Chapter 27 



Annotated Checklist of the Fishes of 

 Enewetak Atoll and Other Marshall Islands 



JOHN E. RANDALL and HELEN A. RANDALL 



Bernice P. Bishop Museum 

 Honolulu. Hauxni 9681 7 



INTRODUCTION 



Intensive fish collecting was carried out in the Marshall 

 Islands in 1946 and 1947 in connection with and following 

 the atom bomb tests of Operation Crossroads. These col- 

 lections were deposited in the National Museum of Natural 

 History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, 

 D. C. Additional Marshall Islands fishes were taken in 

 1948 and 1949 during expeditions of the Applied 

 Fisheries Laboratory of the University of Washington. All 

 these fishes, plus collections from the Mariana Islands, 

 were studied by Leonard P. Schultz, then Curator of 

 Fishes of the National Museum of Natural History, and his 

 collaborators, Wilbert M. Chapman, Earl S. Herald, 

 Ernest A. Lachner, Arthur D. Welander, and Loren P. 

 Woods. The result was the valuable three-volume work on 

 the fishes of the Marshall and Mariana Islands (1953 to 

 1966). A total of 543 species of fishes was reported from 

 the Marshall Islands in these three volumes. Unfortunately, 

 a study of the family with the largest number of species, 

 the Gobiidae, was not completed. 



Very few fishes were reported from the Marshall 

 Islands prior to 1953. Giinther (1873 to 1910) listed 31 

 species from the atolls of Ebon, Jaluit, and Majuro [though 

 his Anguilla mauhtiana and Monacanthus a\^raudi are prob- 

 able locality errors, and his Echeneis scutata (Rernora aus- 

 trahs) is suspect]. Kendall and Goldsborough (1911) 

 recorded 58 species. In a study of poisonous fishes of the 

 Marshalls, Hiyama (1943) illustrated 71 species in color. 

 The text (translated from the Japanese by Van Campen, 

 1950) deals more with the toxicity of these fishes than 

 their classification, but the high quality of most of the fig- 

 ures enables one to make positive identifications to 

 species. 



Donald W. Strasburg (1953) submitted a report to the 



Office of Naval Research entitled Fishes of the Southern 

 Marshall Islands. He treated 345 species in this report, 

 largely from collections made at Arno. He worked closely 

 with Schultz et al. and had access to their manuscripts on 

 Marshall Islands fishes. He listed 26 species of fishes that 

 were not included in the manuscripts of Schultz et al. at 

 that time (later a few of these fishes were reported in 

 Vols. 2 and 3 of Fishes of the Marshall and Marianas 

 Islands). 



Ichthyological activity in the Marshall Islands continued 

 in the years following the research of Schultz et al., largely 

 as a result of the establishment of the Mid-Pacific Research 

 Laboratory on Enewetak (initially named Eniwetok Marine 

 Biological Laboratory). Also of importance has been the 

 presence of a number of scuba divers at Kwajalein with an 

 interest in fishes. Some of these are expert underwater 

 photographers, and their efforts to capture the rare or 

 unusual species on film have provided new records of 

 fishes from the archipelago. 



Randall (1986) reviewed all the new records and new 

 species of fishes of the Marshall Islands that have been 

 documented since Schultz et al., including those of 

 Strasburg's Office of Naval Research report (since few cop- 

 ies were distributed). A total of 86 such fishes was found 

 in the literature, and another 106 new records were added 

 by Randall. Also there are about 45 species of fishes from 

 the Marshalls which are still undescribed. 



In addition to new records and new species, many 

 changes in the names of fishes as listed by Schultz et al. 

 have been made in recent publications. 



The present paper provides a checklist (Table 1) of the 

 reef, shore, and epipelagic fishes known from the Marshall 

 Islands. We record a total of 817 species in 338 genera 

 and 92 families. Deep-water fishes have been omitted from 



289 



