A small green weed-dwelling wrasse that lies along a seagrass blade and is normally seen only when it moves.
To about 16 cm. Juveniles and females are greenish to brown, paler below, with a dark stripe running unbroken from the tip of the snout to the tail base, which is the identifier. Males are reddish-brown or bluish with red and blue wavy lines on the head and blue fin margins.
The other small weed whitings share the same seagrass and the sources do not give a clean contrasting character for any of them, so the unbroken snout-to-tail stripe is what to work from.
It hangs among seagrass blades and macroalgae, picking off amphipods and other small crustaceans, bivalves, snails and worms. Nothing else about its behaviour has been published.
One to twenty-two metres, usually shallower than fifteen, in estuaries, sheltered bays, harbours and on shallow rock. It tolerates brackish water.
The weed whitings used to be their own family, Odacidae. They are now placed inside the wrasses, which is why this fish is in this group.
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.