A silver fish that stands on its head over rubble, blowing sand away from shells.
To about 60 cm, silver-grey with a steep blunt forehead, a large eye and yellow around the pectoral fin base. Adults can display two or three broad dark saddles across the back within seconds and drop them again. Juveniles are strongly barred in black and white and are usually found alone over sand.
It feeds on hard-shelled invertebrates — molluscs, urchins, crabs — crushed with heavy pharyngeal teeth, and hunts by tilting nose-down and blowing water into rubble to expose them. Groups of five to thirty hang above rubble slopes through the day, disperse at night, and are easily approached. The large eye indicates the low-light feeding. Recorded from about 3 to 50 m.
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.