Two dark saddles behind the dorsal fin; the goatfish most often seen on rubble.
To about 35 cm, pale grey to red-brown with two dark saddles on the rear body — one below the second dorsal fin, one on the caudal peduncle — and dark bars across the head. Colour changes rapidly between pale and strongly barred, and a feeding fish is usually paler than a resting one. The dash-and-dot goatfish has a single long stripe rather than saddles.
It probes rubble and coarse sand with its barbels for worms and small crustaceans, generally alone or in twos and threes, and rests on the bottom between bouts. Wrasses and juvenile groupers follow it. It is the goatfish most often encountered on the rubble margins of muck sites and is unbothered by a slow approach. Recorded from about 2 to 40 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.