This fish poops beach sand.

Parrotfish scrape algae off coral with fused teeth, swallow coral chips, then crush them in a throat structure called the pharyngeal mill and expel the ground material as sand. 1 At Vakkaru Island in the Maldives, parrotfish produced more than 85% of the 5.7 kg/m² per year of new sand-grade sediment measured on the outer reef flat. 2 That percentage is local to the measured reef. The coral-to-sand mechanism is observed, but this study does not establish that every beach is fish poop. 3

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