Counting the clownfish, like these on pages 56 and 57 from Sustainable Aquatics, wasn’t overly taxing…

It is with great pleasure that we can announce the winners of our Count the Clownfish Contest.

We realized after setting this up just how much of a challenge it was – but with a Lifetime Subscription to CORAL Magazine at stake, you should have to work for it a little bit!  Of course, random guesses were certainly fair game as well, and we know of at least one entrant who did just that.

In the end, the team of editors settled on 562 as the final head/fin/body count of clownfish appearing in the September/October 2014 Issue of CORAL. We had to go so far as to count zoomed in images via Photoshop and in the end, we concede that even this official final number might be off by a ventral fin or two. But, it is the Official Number! (Feel free to try it yourself.) No one submitted an exact match.

We’d like to congratulate Justin Leoni for coming the closest to the Official count, being only 13 off with his entry of 575 clownfish. Justin will be receiving a Lifetime Subscription to CORAL Magazine!

Daniel Walden, Jake Cooper and Jeff Baxter all came close second, with submissions of  587, 537, and 537 clownfish respectively – 25 away in either direction. They each will receive a 2015 Reef Life Calendar.

Many additional entries were received, with numbers ranging from 1313, down to 402. As a result, Thomas Lundh, Michael Hardman, Richard Coleman, Logan Conley, Marc Levenson, Donald Cordray, Tabitha Cordray, Rick Coleman, Riley Sheckler, Frank Raposo, Ben Strauss, Charles Jonkey, Denise Smith, Charles Clark, Karen Tefft, Shannon Hainline and Dat Tran will all be receiving 2015 Reef Life Calendars!

If you didn’t win, we’d like to thank you for your participation.  While it’s not quite the same as “winning”, you too can get your own Reef Life Calendar for 2015 today!

Page 46, and Bail Aquarich’s photograph of Picasso (and a single Nebula) Percula Clownfish proved to be one of the “meaner” images to do a headcount on! Our official count, arrived at with the help of Photoshop, was 90 clownfish.

Here’s how our official count broke down (with some hints):

Cover (Page 1) = 1
Page 3 = 1
Page 5 = 1
Page 11 = 1
Page 12 = 2 (on product packaging)
Page 13 = 6 (again, on product packaging)
Page 17 = 5 (including one on product packaging, lower right)
Page 18 = 1 (the MBI Logo)
Page 19 = 6 (3 are in logos)
Page 21 = 1
Page 27 = 1
Page 28 = 2 (in the anemone on the reef photo)
Page 34 = 10
Page 35 = 1
Page 36 = 8 (look between the guys legs, and on the shirt at right)
Page 37 = 16
Page 38 = 2
Page 39 = 78 (counted digitally with Photoshop)
Page 40 = 8
Page 41 = 14 (again, via Photoshop)
Page 42 = 11 (ditto)
Page 43 = 3 (main ad image + 2 clowns on packaging)
Page 45 = 1
Page 46 = 90 (counted via Photoshop)
Page 48 = 2
Page 49 = 4
Page 51 = 24
Page 52 = 6
Page 53 = 5
Page 54 = 1
Page 55 = 1
Page 56 = 16
Page 57 = 16
Page 58 = 2
Page 59 = 24
Page 60 = 12
Page 61 = 3 (in the background of the advertisement)
Page 62 = 1
Page 64 = 2
Page 65 = 4
Page 67 = 1
Page 68 = 18
Page 69 = 20
Page 70 = 1
Page 82 = 1
Page 90 = 36 (one big fish, plus all the clowns on the packaging)
Page 93 = 2 (on the packaging in the ad)
Page 96 = 2
Page 109 = 3
Page 110 = 1
Page 112 = 4
Page 113 = 2
Page 118 = 27 (20 clownfish in the tank on the magazine cover, excluding reflections, counted via Photoshop)
Page 119 = 0 = clownfish larvae in eggs did not count!
Page 120 = 1
Page 122 = 40 (counted via Photoshop)
Page 124 = 2
Page 125 = 7
Page 126 = 1

TOTAL = 562

UPDATE, 10-25-2014 – just to prove how hard this contest was, Marc Levenson of Melev’s Reef compared our numbers to his own, and shared with us a Clownfish we all missed – page 108, a tiny Ocellaris clownfish on the package of PE Mysis!