A hamlet with a broad dark bar below the dorsal fin and blue lines on the head. The commonest of the group in most of the region.
To about 15 cm. Pale tan to cream with about six oblique brown bars, one through the eye and one from the nape to the pectoral base, and a broad dark bar under the spiny dorsal fin which is the strongest mark on it. Blue lines and spots on the snout, a blue ring round the eye, blue bars across the gill cover. The bars change intensity within minutes, so two photographs of the same fish can look like two fish.
The butter hamlet is the one to rule out and it is easy: it has no body bars at all, only a black saddle on the tail base.
Three to twenty-three metres on reef with shelter; juveniles in seagrass. It is a simultaneous hermaphrodite, and a spawning pair takes turns at the male and female role through a single dusk spawning. It feeds mainly at dusk, and has been recorded following schools of striped parrotfish to take what they disturb. It does not bolt from a diver.
The hamlets are contentious. About eighteen colour forms are treated as species, the genetic differences between them are very small, and hybrids between forms are fertile. What separates them is colour, and colour is exactly what is argued about. Saying “colour form” alongside the name is not wrong either way. Note also that Florida fish may belong to Hypoplectrus floridae, split off in 2012, which carries a pair of dark spots one above the other at the tail base.
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.
