A large Red Sea wrasse whose tail edge frays into separate rays with age, which is where the name comes from.
To about 50 cm. The adult has a large bright green head with small spots and heavy blue lips, a yellow-green middle grading to dark purple behind, and a yellow mark on black near the gill cover. The identification is the tail: the rays are drawn out into ragged, uneven filaments, which is where the name comes from and which no other Red Sea Cheilinus has.
Females and juveniles are much harder, because the barred flank pattern they carry is shared across the genus. If the tail is a normal tail, the identification is not settled.
Two to thirty metres on the edges of coral-rich fringing slopes and the rubble, sand and seagrass beside them, feeding mainly on hard-shelled molluscs. There is a small commercial fishery and a small aquarium trade at a high price.
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.