A Red Sea goatfish with a dark stripe through the eye and a dark blotch on the tail base, probing sand with chin barbels.
To about 28 cm, common at 25. Pale with a broad black stripe running from the upper lip through the eye along the upper side and ending beneath the rear of the second dorsal fin. The tail base is yellow above with an irregular roundish black spot sitting mostly above the lateral line.
The dash-and-dot goatfish is the pair and the spot settles it: on the tail base here, and larger than the eye and at the middle of the tail fin base there. That fish also reaches 60 cm.
One to forty-five metres on sand near coral reef, working the sand with its barbels for buried invertebrates. It is the commonest shallow goatfish in the Red Sea.
It has passed through the Suez Canal and is now established in the eastern Mediterranean.
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.