The juvenile is orange with white saddles; the adult shares almost nothing with it.
Adults reach about 40 cm and are dark blue-green to almost black, dusted with fine blue spots that thicken towards the rear, with a green head marked in irregular red-orange bands and a bright yellow tail. Juveniles are bright orange-red with four or five white black-edged saddles along the back and no yellow at all, and are so different that they were long treated as a separate species.
It hunts small molluscs, crustaceans and urchins over rubble and sand, turning small stones with the mouth, and buries itself in sand at night and when startled. That habit — a fish vanishing into open sand in front of a diver — is the usual first encounter. Juveniles are found in shallow rubble and are easier to approach than adults. Recorded from about 2 to 40 m.
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.