A large Indian Ocean parrotfish, red-brown in the initial phase and green with pink markings as a terminal male.
To about 70 cm, and it lives to twenty years. Terminal-phase males are strikingly two-toned: brownish to dark green on the head and front body, then abruptly lighter green behind, with blue chin bands, a blue-green beak, an angular almost squared-off snout and a crescent tail with long trailing lobes. Initial-phase females are reddish-brown to grey, greyer in front and whitish behind, with small black spots, irregular black lines and white flecks, and red fins. Juveniles have three brown or olive stripes and a white blotch at the base of the tail.
The blue-chin parrotfish is the confusion; the two-tone split and the angular snout separate this one.
It lives on shallow reef and reef fringes between 1 and 35 m. Females change sex to male at about 37 cm and thirteen years of age, which is unusually precisely documented. It is also called the bicolor parrotfish, which describes it better. It occurs across the Indo-Pacific and again from the Gulf of California to the Galapagos, including Revillagigedo, Clipperton, Cocos and Malpelo.
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.