Covered in skin tassels, and matched to the weed and hydroid growth it sits in.
A filefish to about 31 cm, pale grey to olive with a network of fine dark lines over the body and skin tassels of varying length over almost the whole of it, longest along the back and the belly. The snout is drawn out and slightly upturned, and the first dorsal spine sits directly over the eye and can be locked upright. Against clean sand it is conspicuous; against a stand of weed or a growth of hydroid it disappears, and that is where it is usually found.
It feeds on small benthic invertebrates picked off weed and rubble, moving slowly and hanging at odd angles, and it drifts rather than swims. Approached, it turns the narrow profile of the body towards the diver and keeps the tassels between itself and the camera, which is why frames of the fish head-on are common and frames of the flank are not. Recorded across the tropical Indo-West Pacific on sheltered sand and weed bottoms, from a few metres to about 25 m.
Juveniles are smaller-tasselled and more heavily marked, and they sit deeper inside the weed than the adults do. On muck sites the species is a candidate any time a diver is working weed for ghost pipefish, because the ground and the depth are the same.
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.