Blue with a broad yellow band along the back, feeding on plankton in fast streams over Maldivian reef.
To about 40 cm. Fusiform and compressed with a small terminal mouth. The upper third of the body and the whole tail are bright yellow, and the yellow runs forward over the nape onto the head; the middle third is blue and the lower third and belly white.
The blue-and-yellow fusilier schools alongside it and where the yellow begins is the separator: from the head and nape rearward here, only from just in front of the dorsal fin there, leaving that fish’s head and forebody blue.
Nought to fifty metres, in fast midwater aggregations over deep lagoons and outside reef slopes, frequently mixed with other fusiliers. It feeds on zooplankton in the water column. Eggs are small, numerous and pelagic.
It is an Indian Ocean and Indonesian fish and is absent from the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf, which is worth knowing when identifying a photograph from either.
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.