Plain white sand-sifter with a row of blue spots on the cheek, in pairs on shallow silt.
A sleeper goby to about 14 cm, plain pearly white to pale grey with no dashes or stripes on the body, and a row of about six small bright blue spots along the cheek below and behind the eye. That row is the mark. Valenciennea puellaris carries rows of orange dashes down the flank, and Valenciennea strigata has a yellow head and one continuous blue line rather than separate spots. Males carry the first dorsal fin drawn out into a filament.
Lives in pairs and digs its own burrow under a rock, a slab or a piece of debris, carrying mouthfuls of sand and rubble out to build up the entrance; there is no shrimp involved and the burrow is the fish’s own work. Feeding is the sand-sifting the genus is known for, sediment taken in at the mouth, sorted, and vented through the gill openings as a fine plume.
It occupies shallower and siltier ground than V. puellaris, including sheltered bays and the margins of seagrass, and is recorded from about 1 to 20 m. A pair holds a small area and returns to the same burrow, so one found on a dive is usually still there on the next.
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.
