A shorter, deeper bigeye with faint bars and dark spots on the fins, under ledges and in caves by day.
To about 50 cm, common at 20. Oval and strongly compressed with an upturned oblique mouth and a very large eye, silvery pink, mottled red or solid red, and diagnostically elliptical dark specks on the soft dorsal, anal and tail fins.
The Atlantic bigeye is the pair and the tail settles it: rounded here, slightly concave there.
Three to three hundred metres, usually the top thirty-five, on lagoon and seaward reef. Nocturnal, sitting under or near ledges by day and feeding at night on octopus, shrimp, mantis shrimps, crabs and small fish. It produces sound.
A name flag. A 2017 revision split the circumtropical glasseye and restricted Heteropriacanthus cruentatus to the Atlantic and southwest Indian Ocean; the Pacific fish is Heteropriacanthus carolinus. Ciguatera is reported.
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.