It
was definitely a bad news day for the dwarf gobi when SIO’s
H.J. Walker and William Watson of the Southwest Fisheries Science
Center announced it was no longer the world’s smallest fish.
That title now belongs to the “stout infantfish.” The
new species, which is no longer than the width of a pencil, was
identified by Walker and Watson last summer. It is found exclusively
in the vicinity of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and the
Coral Sea, and only six specimens are known to exist. The largest
specimen—and only female—measures approximately a third
of an inch (8.4 millimeters) while the males measure just over
a quarter of an inch (7 millimeters). Roughly 500,000 of these
fish weighed together would barely tip the scales at one pound.
“When I first looked under the microscope
and recognized something that I knew was a new species I said to
myself, ‘Wow, this
is really great,’” says Walker,
a senior museum scientist in the Scripps Marine Vertebrates Collection. “But
at the time I didn’t realize that I was looking at the world’s
smallest vertebrate.”
The stoutfish’s lifespan is
sadly as short as its size. It lives approximately only two months
and therefore goes through
a number of generations each year. Short but sweet. 
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