The juvenile tumbles across the bottom in a way that has nothing to do with how it swims as an adult.
A large sweetlips reaching about 72 cm, whose juvenile and adult forms were once described as separate species. The juvenile is dark brown with a small number of very large white blotches edged in near-black, arranged with the irregularity of a harlequin’s costume; as the fish grows the blotches break up into an increasing number of small dark spots on a pale ground, and the adult is grey with fine brown spotting over the body and fins. Intermediate fish carry both patterns at once and are the easiest stage at which to be sure of the species.
The juvenile swims with an exaggerated, unsteady rocking of the whole body, head down, drifting and tumbling near the bottom in a way that reads as a drifting leaf or a dead fragment rather than a fish. It keeps to overhangs, the shaded side of rubble and jetty structure, and rarely strays into the open. The behaviour makes it a common subject for slow-shutter photography, since the motion is continuous and predictable. Recorded from about 2 to 30 m; adults move out to deeper reef and are seldom seen on the same sites.
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.