A green wrasse of the shallow surge zone, recorded only at the Revillagigedo Islands and Clipperton.
To about 30 cm. The initial phase is dull green with red-brown spots or short vertical streaks on the scale centres, a head densely covered in small red spots and streaks, and about six diffuse dark bars on the body. The terminal male is greenish blue, sometimes reddish on the belly, with a concave tail whose lobes draw out into points. Two other Thalassoma are here and both are separable on one mark: the sunset wrasse has a broad dark band across the outer part of the pectoral fin, and the Cortez rainbow wrasse has a broad yellow bar just behind the head. This fish has neither.
It lives in the surge, on rocky shores in the top ten metres, which is where to look for it rather than on the deeper rock. It eats worms, crustaceans, gastropods, bivalves, sea stars and small fish. STRI records it from the Revillagigedo Islands and Clipperton, with strays at the tip of Baja California; FishBase gives only the Revillagigedos. It is not, on the STRI reading, a Revillagigedo endemic. Listed as Vulnerable.
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.