A sand-feeder with chin barbels, and the fish other species follow to steal from.
To about 60 cm, white to pale pink with a black stripe running from the snout through the eye to below the rear of the dorsal fin, and a separate black spot on the caudal peduncle — the dash and the dot. Two long chin barbels are folded into a groove when not in use.
It works over sand and rubble with the barbels extended, probing for worms and small crustaceans and throwing up small clouds of sediment. Wrasses, jacks and juvenile groupers follow it closely to take what it flushes, and on muck sites it is often the centre of a small following group. It is unbothered by divers at a metre or two and is one of the easiest sand-flat fish to photograph in the act of feeding. Recorded from the shallows to about 40 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.