A plain dark sweetlips with swollen pink lips; a turbid-water fish rather than a reef one.
To about 75 cm, plain grey-brown to almost black with a paler belly, a steep forehead in adults and thick, swollen, pink-white lips that give the fish its common name. Juveniles are dark with a pale margin to the tail and lack the developed lips.
Unlike the patterned sweetlips it favours turbid inshore water, estuaries and harbours, and is found around jetty pilings, wrecks and silty reef rather than on clean coral. It hangs almost motionless by day, usually alone or in twos, and feeds on benthic invertebrates at night. It drifts steadily away from a direct approach and is best worked from a fixed distance. Recorded from about 2 to 30 m.
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.