A silver schooling fish of southern kelp reef, common in Tasmania and Victoria.
To about 70 cm. Moderately deep-bodied with a narrow tail base, low dorsal and anal fins, a deeply notched dorsal and a deeply forked tail. Silvery-grey with short irregular brown to greenish-brown lines on the upper sides and a dark margin to the tail.
The real trumpeter is the larger relative to rule out: it passes a metre and is boldly striped lengthwise, and the stripes are the separation.
Two to sixty metres. Adults school over sand near reef, occasionally in thousands. The juveniles are worth knowing about: called paper fish, they are thin and near-transparent and school over shallow rocky reef.
It is rated highly vulnerable to fishing and is regarded as excellent eating, which is the usual combination.
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.