The Maui batfish – A remembrance

July 8, 2025: “Hey, give us a couple minutes,” the free diving instructor called over from his yellow kayak. “We just shot the fish you guys like.” And by “like” he didn’t mean the-kind-of-fish-you-like-to-eat. He was referring to a particular individual fish – a longfin batfish – that the Maui dive community had ‘liked’ for over two decades.

We knew this fish for so many years partly because he (or she) was the only one of his kind on the entire island of Maui! This species normally lives only in the Indo-West Pacific, but exceedingly rarely their larvae may drift all the way to Hawai‘i or they may arrive as juveniles or adults under floating debris that has drifted to Hawai‘i (see Hawaiisfishes.com for some sightings under a floating net off the Big Island and at offshore moi cages off Oahu).

This happens so rarely that only two other longfin batfish (also known as spadefish) have been recorded from reefs in the main Hawaiian islands – one on the Sea Tiger wreck off Oahu and one on a reef off the south side of Lana‘i. That’s it. In history.

How do we know for sure that he was the same batfish?

There was also a more personal way that we knew him. From the very first meeting he had a small notch in his anal fin, appearing to be around the 6th or 7th anal-fin ray according to Dr. Richard Pyle, Senior Curator of Ichthyology at the Bishop Museum. This persisted throughout his life. While he had numerous tissue tears in various fins over the years, the tears healed. The notch in his anal fin however – perhaps because part of the bony fin ray was bitten off – never regenerated.

Yes, Maui’s batfish was one-of-a-kind.

Maui batfish sightings

We first met him 85 feet underwater in Dec. 2003 at a place divers call the 85-foot Pinnacle. We were shocked. No batfish had ever been recorded from Maui before. Two days later we were diving on a wreck 3½ miles up the Maui coastline – and there he was again! Swimming calmly around inside the cabin of the St. Anthony wreck, then emerging from the cabin and joining the turtles on deck. We could easily tell he was the same fish because there were identical tears in his dorsal fin (fish can get these from strenuous swimming, trying to escape predators, territorial scuffles, etc.).

At that time he was still young as evidenced by his rounded forehead, which gave him a puppy-like appearance. Later in life a bony hump develops and gives them an angular profile.

He stayed on the wreck for a few days and then he was gone. We understood. As the only one of his kind he may have spent a good part of his life searching for someone, anyone, who looked like him. In their native habitat (Polynesia, Indonesia, Japan, etc.) longfin batfish are a schooling fish. Imagine the anxiety of not being able to fulfill that innate desire to school or to spawn with his own kind.

We saw him at the wreck 13 months later in 2005, then again in 2011, 2016, 2023 and 2024. (Undoubtedly he was there other days/years/times that divers did not happen to dive there). He would stay for 2-5 weeks each time and then disappear again. Wherever he went it was apparently not someplace visited by divers. Except once in late 2020 divemaster John Grimes spotted him in the cavern on the point at Pu‘u ola‘i, directly inshore from the 85’ Pinnacle where we had first seen him. By the fateful day, July 8, 2025, we had known the Maui batfish for 21 ½ years.

How long can reef fish live?

Yes, reef fish really can live this long. Using cross-sections of inner ear bones biologists are able to determine the ages of numerous species of fishes by counting annual growth bands, similar to tree rings. Some long-lived reef fish species include yellow tangs, the oldest of which was determined to be 41 years old. Others, such as three different species of tropical reef snapper species in Australia, were aged between 60-81 years. So the Maui batfish had potentially decades still ahead.

Legacy of the Maui batfish

During his long life, he appeared and disappeared from the wreck, and word spread about this stately fish. Divers were stoked if they happened to visit the St. Anthony wreck on a day the batfish was in residence. And dive guides texted each other whenever he re-appeared at the wreck. He was the subject of a blog article, a marine life website and many social media posts.

Divers from around the world knew him. In fact, on this fateful day a visiting diver from Oregon requested to go to the St. Anthony for the second dive, just on the slim chance that the batfish might be there. One of the dive guides who was out on the boat that day just for fun descended before the group and saw, to his horror, the batfish lying on the bottom, pierced by a spear, and still moving. He could not believe his eyes.

And that’s when, right before the dive group jumped in, the Maui free diving instructor called over to the dive guide on the boat “Hey, give us a couple minutes” and told her not to get in just yet, because his customer (who hadn’t been briefed about the Maui batfish) had just shot the batfish. They needed time to clean up the scene.

The freediving instructor dived down to retrieve first the line, which was threaded in and out of the cabin as the batfish had tried to flee with the steel spear piercing his side. Then they dived down again to extract and retrieve the spear.

And the batfish? His scraped and ravaged body was discarded on the bottom – eyes drained of life, intestines wound around his pectoral fin.

The news flew though the dive community one text at a time. Maui’s batfish was no more. And if there hadn’t been witnesses, no one ever would have known how the Maui batfish’s story ended. The odds of being able to know that… out of all the days, hours and minutes in a year … the odds of divers who knew him being present during just those exact last minutes of his life to say goodbye – incredible!

As far as I know, no one ever named him. That feels proper for such a stalwart fish, a veteran of so many years, so many miles of swimming, all of them solo. But the time he spent on the wreck was different. There he was not alone. He had mates, divers who treasured him. There he was known.

RIP Maui batfish, from your mates at B&B Scuba, Island Style Diving, Maui Dreams, Maui Diamond Boat Charters, Mike Severns Diving, ProDiver Maui, The Scuba Shack and the Scuba Kiosk at the Wailea Marriott.

Written by Pauline Fiene. Photos as credited.

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If you have any photos of the Maui batfish and would like to add them to this article, please contact us through the comment section below.