Sand-sifting goby in pairs, marked with rows of orange dashes along a white body.
A large, pale sleeper goby to about 20 cm, white to pearly grey with several rows of orange to yellow dashes and elongate spots running the length of the flank, and a scatter of small pale blue spots on the head and cheek. The dashes are the mark. Valenciennea sexguttata has a plain body and a row of bright blue spots below the eye instead; Valenciennea strigata has a yellow head and a single blue stripe. These are not shrimpgobies and there is no shrimp: the fish digs and maintains its own burrow, usually a tunnel under a rock or a lump of rubble, sometimes with more than one entrance.
Almost always in pairs, working a patch of sand together. It feeds by taking a mouthful of sediment, sorting it inside the mouth and passing the sand out through the gill openings in a steady plume, keeping the small crustaceans, worms and eggs it contains. A pair will work its way across an area in short hops and returns repeatedly to the same burrow. Carrying rubble to the burrow mouth in the mouth is normal behaviour and not a sign of disturbance.
Recorded from about 3 to 30 m on open sand and rubble, often just off the reef. The sifting is worth waiting for as a photograph, and it happens on the fish’s own schedule; sitting still on the sand at a few metres and letting the pair work back towards the camera is more productive than following them.
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.
