Terminal males are yellow at the front and blue-green behind with a black bar between; juveniles are plain yellow with a blue line.
To about 19 cm. Juveniles are yellow to yellow-brown with a dark-edged blue stripe from the eye to the tail base. Initial-phase fish are brown over the upper head and front of the back, yellow on the cheek and middle of the body and white below. Terminal males have a bright yellow head and upper body, then a thick black bar behind the pectoral joining a broad black stripe that runs along the top of the back to the tail.
The terminal male is unmistakable. The juvenile is not, against a juvenile bluehead wrasse, and the stripe separates them: blue with dark edges here, solid black there.
Two to eighty metres, usually four to sixty, over rubble and sand within and around the reef. It breeds in leks and every fish starts as a female, changing at about 7 cm. It moves constantly but comes readily to a diver who stays still.
Common in the aquarium trade.
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.