A wide-ranging Pacific wrasse whose presence here is part of the central Pacific element in this fauna.
To about 30 cm. The initial phase is yellow with light vertical red lines. The terminal male has a pink and green head and then an abrupt change to a blue or blue-green body with reddish vertical lines, and pectoral fins that are yellow at the base and blue to black towards the tip. That abrupt break between head and body is the character.
The sunset wrasse is the fish to rule out at Revillagigedo, and it has no such break.
Nought to thirty metres on outer lagoon and seaward reef, usually in groups. It eats crabs, shrimps, snails, bivalves, worms and fish eggs, and spawns into open water.
This is an Indo-Pacific species and its presence at Revillagigedo is part of the central Pacific element in that fauna, alongside the tiger reef-eel, the convict surgeonfish and the stareye parrotfish. FishBase does not list it from the eastern Pacific, so treat the record as one to confirm rather than as settled.
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.