Brown with orange spots and two white patches at the tail base, usually solitary and often hanging head-down among gorgonians.
To 20 cm, commonly 14. The body is covered in small orange spots, many with brown centres, mixed with whitish spots of the same size, and there are dull yellow lines on the head. The reliable field mark is a pair of white patches on the base of the tail. The body is short and deep with a pointed snout and a tiny mouth, and the fish can change the intensity of its pattern quickly.
The whitespotted filefish is the confusion. It is much larger, at about 45 cm, its spots are large and white rather than small and orange, and it has a pair of prominent orange-yellow spines on the tail base.
It lives on reef between 3 and 50 m and usually between 3 and 20 m, alone or in pairs, and it often hangs head-down among gorgonians and coral. It eats algae, sponges, tunicates and hydroids. The name on this site keeps the word Caribbean deliberately: without it, “orangespotted filefish” collides with a completely different and much more famous Indo-Pacific fish, the harlequin filefish.
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.