A large angelfish, banded pale and dark as an adult and quite different as a juvenile, over rock and boulder ground.
To about 46 cm, common at 26. The adult is grey, darker at the front, with the rear of the body and the adjacent dorsal and anal fins charcoal to blackish, a broad yellow bar just behind the cheek and a second narrower black-edged yellow bar just behind the pectoral base. The juvenile is black with six curved yellow bars on head, body and tail with narrow blue bars between them.
The king angelfish is the pair to separate it from, and bar colour does it: yellow here, a single narrow white bar there. For juveniles: yellow bars alternating with blue here, blue bars only on an orange-to-brown body there.
One to fifty metres on rock, usually six to twelve. Adults range widely in pairs or loose groups; juveniles are solitary, territorial, and clean parasites off other fish. It appears to be monogamous, breeds from midsummer to early autumn, and juveniles are commonest from August to November.
It eats sponges. There is a subsistence fishery and an 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.