A small shallow shrimpgoby with dark blotches over pale sand and bright blue flecks on the head.
A shrimpgoby to about 8 cm, sandy grey to fawn with four or five dark blotches along the lower flank and a series of paler saddles above them, and with small bright blue spots and dashes on the cheek and the front of the dorsal fin. The blue is the first thing that shows in a light and the last thing visible as the fish drops, and it separates the species from the plainer small shrimpgobies on the same ground.
It works shallow water, mostly above about 12 m, on coarse sand and broken rubble at the back of reef flats and along the edges of sheltered bays. The burrow is shared with an alpheid shrimp and is usually dug against a stone or a lump of dead coral, which gives the wall something to hold to. In the shallows the surge moves the spoil around and the entrance changes shape from one day to the next.
Because the ground is shallow and often broken, the species is passed over on dives that start deep and finish on the reef. Recorded across the Indo-Pacific. Pairs are common, and a burrow that produces two gobies of different sizes with one shrimp is normal rather than unusual.
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.
