Dark and white-spotted, with a false eye on the dorsal fin and a habit of showing only its tail.
A deep-bodied fish to about 16 cm, dark brown to black and covered in small pale blue-white spots, with dorsal, anal and pelvic fins so enlarged and rounded that the outline is closer to a fan than to a fish. At the rear base of the dorsal fin there is a black spot ringed in white or pale blue. The fins carry the same spotting as the body, so a fish with the fins spread reads as one continuous spotted surface.
The pattern and the spot are the point. Threatened, the fish puts its head into a hole and leaves the rear of the body and the spread unpaired fins outside, and what remains in view is a dark spotted surface with a single ringed eyespot at one end. The resemblance is to the head of a whitemouth moray, and the behaviour has been described in the literature as mimicry of that fish. Whether a particular predator is deceived is not something a diver can judge, but the posture is consistent and easy to observe.
It is nocturnal and shy, spending the day well back in a ledge or inside debris and coming out onto rubble after dark. Most daytime sightings are of a fish already retreating. Recorded across the Indo-Pacific on reef and rubble from about 3 to 45 m. It feeds on small crustaceans and fish taken at night.
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.
