A yellow-striped goatfish that rests in stationary schools by day and feeds over sand at night.
To about 31 cm, though one source gives 40. Elongate and cylindrical with a flat underside, a blunt snout and a pair of long chin barbels. Yellow to greenish-yellow above and whitish below, with a broad bright yellow stripe along the middle, a thin bluish stripe immediately above it, and a bright yellow tail.
There is a near-identical eastern Pacific goatfish separable only on pectoral ray and gill raker counts, and STRI states plainly that field separation is unreliable, so an identification here should be recorded with that caution.
Two to a hundred and ten metres on reef with adjacent sand and rubble. It digs in sand with the barbels, often in small schools, and switches to reddish blotches when it settles on the bottom at night.
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.