A small damselfish with a deeply forked tail, hanging in large numbers in the water above rock.
To about 13 cm. Metallic grey, slender and compressed, with a prominent white spot just below the end of the dorsal fin base, an intense blackish streak in each lobe of the tail, and a blackish mark at the pectoral base.
The silverstripe chromis is the practical confusion in these waters: it is deep bodied and plain, where this fish is slender with dark tail streaks and the white spot.
One to eighty metres over rock and coral. It forms large midwater aggregations around rocky reefs feeding on zooplankton and pelagic fish eggs.
One thing worth recording on this page. Its close relative the Galapagos damsel, Azurina eupalama, has not been recorded since the 1982 to 1983 El Niño and is treated as possibly extinct — the first marine fish thought to have been lost to a warming event. It looked much like this one.
The genus has moved: Azurina atrilobata is accepted, Chromis atrilobata superseded.
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.