A lizardfish that lies on sand or buries with only the eyes out, and takes small fish with a strike from a standing start.
To about 46 cm, common at 40. Cigar-shaped with a pointed head and a large mouth full of fine teeth, tan to olive with unevenly distributed yellow stripes and three to six dark bars on the tail. The mark is a small rectangular black blotch on the shoulder just behind the gill cover.
That shoulder mark separates it from the inshore lizardfish, which has none.
Three to over three hundred metres, usually the top sixty, on sand around boulders and in sandy corridors within patch reefs. It rests propped on its pelvic fins watching, buries itself with a wriggle leaving only the eyes showing, and lunges upward at passing fish.
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.
