A slender temperate wrasse with a blue line through the eye and a yellow saddle. Common on east coast reef and unrelated to the humphead wrasse despite the name.
To about 47 cm. Juveniles and females are reddish-orange on the upper half and reddish-orange and white below. Terminal males are reddish-brown above and yellowish-brown below with blue bands on the head and throat and blue spots on the body scales.
Female crimson-banded wrasse share the same New South Wales reef and are the confusion. They carry rows of white spots on a reddish-brown ground; this fish has the two-tone body and, in males, the blue head banding, and never white spot rows.
One to sixty metres on exposed rock, kelp and urchin barrens. Adults form loose aggregations on the deeper grazed reef; juveniles are solitary in bays, harbours and estuaries. Females mature at about two years and 18 cm and become terminal males at about five years and 27 to 34 cm, living to around fourteen. Spawning is in summer.
Endemic to southern Australia. The name is qualified here because “Maori wrasse” is used in the tropics for the humphead wrasse, which is a different and much larger fish.
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.