A very long thin fish with a whip-like filament off the tail and a row of blue spots along the back, hovering over sand and seagrass.
To about 200 cm, common at 120. Extremely elongate and flattened top to bottom with a long tubular snout, and a whip-like filament trailing from the centre of the forked tail.
That filament alone separates it from the trumpetfish. Colour backs it up: brownish above with a row of pale blue spots along the back from head to dorsal fin, a second row beside it, and two rows on the snout.
To two hundred metres over grass flats, reef and hard bottom. It is solitary and hovers almost motionless in open water above the bottom, then closes on small fish and crustaceans and takes them by suction.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.