A stout filefish with faint bars and a pale tail base, usually in pairs and slow to move away.
To 38 cm, commonly about 25. Greyish-brown to yellowish-brown with about twelve dark vertical bars, strongest towards the tail. The lips are whitish, which is a good mark, and the iris and tail are orange, brighter in males. Males also have longer, deeper orange spines on the base of the tail. The body is oblong and compressed with a pointed snout and a very small mouth. Juveniles are grey-brown with scattered white spots.
The scrawled filefish is the eastern Pacific confusion and it is much more elongate, with blue scrawls and a long tapering tail. The white lips and the orange spine patch settle this one.
It lives on coral and rocky reef between about 3 and 35 m, and has been recorded to 70 m. It eats the tips of branching coral, algae, sponges, urchins and molluscs. It is usually in pairs and does not school. It occurs across the Indo-Pacific and again from Mexico to Colombia, and at Revillagigedo it is on all the islands.
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.