A small bright yellow wrasse of open rubble; it dives into the sand when alarmed.
To about 12 cm and entirely yellow, with two or three black eyespots along the dorsal fin — usually three in females and juveniles, fewer and fainter in terminal males, which also carry a green-black mark behind the eye. On rubble slopes it is one of the few fish that is simply yellow, which makes it easy at a glance and hard to confuse.
It forages over open rubble and coarse sand for small crustaceans and worms, ranging well off the substrate but never far from it, and buries itself in sand to sleep and to escape. It is common on the rubble margins of muck sites and is one of the species most often seen at depths below 40 m on sand slopes. Recorded from about 5 to 60 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.