The juvenile drifts on its side at the surface, coloured and shaped like a dead leaf.
Adults reach about 50 cm, silver-grey and nearly circular in outline, with two faint dark bars — one through the eye, one behind the pectoral fin — and rounded fins. Juveniles are red-brown to orange-brown with tall fins and drift on their sides at the surface among mangrove roots and debris, where they are close to indistinguishable from a dead leaf. The teira batfish is the usual confusion; the black blotch above its anal fin is absent here.
Adults form loose groups around wrecks and slope edges and, like the teira batfish, will follow divers. Juveniles are found in very shallow sheltered water and are a reliable find at mangrove-backed sites and around jetties, though they will not hold still once they know they have been seen. Recorded from about 2 to 35 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.
