A long-snouted butterflyfish of silty inshore reef rather than clear coral.
To about 20 cm, silver-white with four orange-brown vertical bands edged in black, a black-ringed false eyespot at the rear of the dorsal fin, and a long forceps-like snout used to pick invertebrates out of crevices and sponges. The eyespot and the true eye’s dark band work together: at rest the fish reads as facing the wrong way.
It prefers turbid inshore water, silty slopes, rubble and jetty pilings, and is more often recorded on muck sites than on clear outer reef. Usually in pairs, moving steadily and probing continuously. Approach is easier from below than from above, since the fish drifts downward and forward when disturbed rather than fleeing. Recorded from about 3 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.