Purple-blue and slender, in large streams that move along the reef edge feeding on plankton. Numbers rather than markings are what make it recognisable.
To about 30 cm. Violet to purple over the head, body and fins with a black snout, and large individuals wash yellow over the lower two-thirds. Courting males go blackish with an orange wash behind. Juveniles are purplish with a row of white and black blotches along the upper back. The tail is notched in young fish and crescent-shaped in adults.
At a distance the schools look like blue chromis in the same water. Two things separate them: the black snout on a violet body, and the swimming action, which is a rowing of the pectoral fins rather than a chromis’s flutter.
It hangs in midwater off the reef edge and the wall in loose schools, feeding on plankton, small jellyfish and larvae. Breeding is in leks. Sex change happens at around 16 cm.
Eight to a hundred metres, usually shallower than forty.
WoRMS accepts Bodianus parrae. Most field guides still print Clepticus parrae, which is the same fish.
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.