Small, patient, and photographable because it does not move until it has to.
To about 7 cm, white to pale pink with five or six broken red-brown bars, red spotting on the head, and tufts of fine filaments at the tips of the dorsal spines. The similar Cirrhitichthys oxycephalus is more heavily blotched in red-brown and lacks the clean barring.
It perches on coral heads and rubble on its stiffened pectoral rays, watching for small crustaceans and fish, and moves in short darts between perches. Because it holds a perch and faces forward it is one of the more cooperative small reef fish for portraits — a slow approach to fifteen or twenty centimetres is usually possible. Recorded from about 5 to 45 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.