Western Indian Ocean: Oman and Mauritius. Western Pacific: Indonesia to Fiji and Tonga, north to southern Japan, south to northern Australia.

Distinguished by its long spatulate snout and slender shape; reddish or brown with a pair of yellow stripes on upper half of the head and body.

Lives in close association with long-spined sea urchins or branching corals of sheltered reefs. Juvenile fish eat pedicellariae and sphaeridia of the host Diadema and commensal copepods; adult fish eat burrowing bivalves in corals as well as tube feet of their host and eggs of a commercial shrimp.