A deep silver fish that schools in mid-water over temperate reef, often in large numbers at the edge of a bommie.
To about 30 cm, though the Australian Museum gives about 37. Deep-bodied and compressed with a small oblique mouth, grey, blue-grey or green-grey above and silver-grey below, with blackish margins on the gill cover and the pectoral fin base, and no body stripes.
That plain flank is the separation from the mado, which is striped and shoals with it.
One to thirty metres on coastal rocky reef, in large midwater schools over the reef picking plankton, with small juveniles in estuaries and rockpools.
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.