Terminal males are blue with a broad yellow and red band; initial-phase fish are yellow with a dark stripe.
To 15 cm. The initial phase has a pair of bright yellow and red stripes either side of a broad dark stripe running from the snout through the eye and along the body. The terminal male is purplish with a broad yellow bar just behind the head, a bluish tail and a yellow pectoral fin with a blue edge.
The sunset wrasse is the other Thalassoma at all these islands, and the yellow bar is the separator: present here, absent there.
It feeds on plankton in aggregations over the rock, and also takes small crustaceans and fish eggs off the bottom. Juveniles clean other fish. Sex change from female to male takes two to six weeks. Spawning is into open water.
Two to twenty-five metres over rock and coral. It is heavily collected for aquariums.
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.