A heavy wrasse with protruding canines that carries shells to a rock and smashes them.
To about 38 cm, heavy-bodied and mottled brown-green with a pale band across the mid-body, a dark blotch behind the pectoral fin and four prominent forward-pointing canine teeth. Colour shifts markedly with mood and background.
It feeds on molluscs, crabs and urchins over sand, rubble and seagrass, and is one of the small number of fishes known to use a tool: it carries a bivalve in its mouth to a chosen rock and strikes it repeatedly against the surface until the shell breaks, returning to the same anvil over long periods. The behaviour has been filmed in this region and is worth watching for on rubble slopes — a fish repeatedly hitting one spot is doing this. Recorded from about 1 to 25 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.