Silver with a dark spot below the dorsal fin and faint yellow lines, in schools over Red Sea reef.
To about 35 cm. Dark brown on the back and upper sides, whitish and silvery below, with four or five narrow yellow stripes below the lateral line. The mark is a distinct round black spot on the back beneath the rear of the spiny dorsal, sitting over the lateral line.
The dory snapper is the standing problem in the Red Sea and the spot separates them: round here, oval there. The stripe count backs it up — four or five here against six or seven.
Five to twenty metres on shallow coastal reef, characteristically near freshwater run-off, and it will enter fresh water to feed on small fish and invertebrates. It forms large schools. Juveniles are intertidal.
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.