A Red Sea bannerfish with a long trailing white dorsal filament, on reef slopes and usually in pairs.
To about 18 cm. Pale yellow fading to white with two dark diagonal bands and a long white filament trailing from the dorsal fin.
The schooling bannerfish also occurs in the Red Sea and the ground colour separates them: pale yellow here, white there. Behaviour backs it up — that fish forms large midwater schools as an adult and this one is solitary or paired.
Three to fifty metres on coral slopes, with juveniles on deeper reef where coral is sparse. Adults are monogamous; juveniles gather in large groups near the base of the reef, sometimes mixed with related species. It takes zooplankton and bottom invertebrates, and whether it eats coral is undetermined.
Juvenile cleaning is documented for the schooling bannerfish but not for this one, so this entry does not claim it.
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.