A small deep-sand shrimpgoby carrying the first dorsal spine drawn out into a fine thread.
A shrimpgoby to about 6 cm, translucent white to pale grey with rows of small brown to orange spots along the flank and a scatter of finer spots over the head. The first dorsal spine is extended into a thin filament that stands well clear of the fin when the fish is settled. Body markings are close to those of several other Ctenogobiops, so the filament and the depth are what most records rest on.
It shares a burrow with an alpheid snapping shrimp, on the usual terms: the shrimp does the digging and keeps an antenna against the fish while it pushes spoil out of the entrance, and both withdraw when the goby signals. The ground is deeper and coarser than that used by the shallow shrimpgobies, generally from about 15 m and often well below 25 m, on open sand away from structure.
Small size and depth together make it easy to pass over, and it is usually logged only when a diver is already working slowly along deep sand. Recorded from Indonesia, the Philippines and the western Pacific. The published depth range extends deeper than most recreational diving reaches, so the shallow records are the thin part of the picture rather than the deep ones.
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.
