Eschmeyer's rhinopias

To around 17 cm. The three rhinopias are the group divers most often get wrong, and colour will not separate them — this one is normally a single uniform hue, purple, pink, red or yellow, with no distinct markings, but that is a tendency rather than a rule. The structures are what separate them. It carries only two tentacles under the lower jaw, against nine to twenty-four in the weedy rhinopias and twelve to eighteen in the lacy; it has no tentacles below the eye and none of consequence on the body above the lateral line; and the tentacles above the eye and behind the nostril are short, unbranched and flattened into paddles, which is where the alternative name paddle-flap comes from. The most useful character underwater is the spiny dorsal fin, which is notably fleshy with an unnotched or barely notched margin, where both other species are strongly notched. There is one black spot in the soft dorsal, and the caudal ray tips divide into four branches.

Recorded between about 18 and 55 m on coral and rubble. It does not swim: it walks and hops on its pectoral and pelvic fins, sways with the current, and takes prey with a fast gape. It sheds its skin periodically, though the evidence for that is aquarium observation — one animal reported shedding about every twelve days, with cloudy eyes beforehand — rather than field study. Long thought endemic to Mauritius and now known from East Africa east to the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and Queensland. Whether it is genuinely a separate species from the weedy rhinopias is not entirely settled: a 2006 review confirmed it as valid and specifically ruled out the two being sexes of one species, having found developed ova in both forms, but video of the two forms mating at Alor keeps the question alive and no molecular work on the genus exists.