Chromis hypsilepis
A common damsel on New South Wales reefs, spotted year-round in 16 to 23C water at over a hundred logged sites.
Slim, oval-bodied damselfish around 11 cm, coloured a soft grey-brown that pales toward a translucent, forked tail. Look for a slight darker smudge at the base of the pectoral fin and the way it holds itself just off the reef, angled into the current. There's no bold pattern here, it's the plain grey-brown body and pale tail against a rocky reef backdrop that gives it away.
Usually seen hovering in small, loose groups a metre or two off the reef, picking at plankton drifting past in the current rather than darting for cover. It tends to hold its position over rocky ledges and kelp-edged reef rather than burying into a bommie, and it pays divers little attention, carrying on feeding as you pass. Most logs describe it as uncommon rather than abundant, so a sighting is a nice tick rather than a given.
As an omnivorous reef damsel, it picks plankton out of the water column as well as grazing algae off rock, giving it a bit more dietary flexibility than the strictly herbivorous damsels on the same reefs.
No clear seasonal pattern shows in the sightings, and with a comfortable range of 16.3 to 22.8C it seems to be present across the New South Wales dive calendar. Treat it as a year-round sighting rather than something tied to a particular month.
Reef neighbours a diver could mistake it for. Use the identification notes above to tell them apart.
This one is essentially a New South Wales fish as far as the logs go, with strong numbers across dive sites there and Australia the only country it's reliably recorded in. If you're diving temperate reefs anywhere along that coast, expect it to turn up, usually in loose numbers rather than big schools.
Mapping where Brown Puller is logged…
New South Wales, Australia is by far the strongest region for sightings, with dozens of dive sites logging this damselfish. Outside Australia it doesn't show up reliably in the data, so it's effectively a temperate NSW reef species for divers.
There's no strong seasonal signal, so it appears to be a year-round sighting on New South Wales reefs. Its comfortable temperature range of 16.3 to 22.8C spans most of the local dive season anyway.
Look for a small, slim damselfish around 11 cm with a grey-brown body and a paler, forked tail, usually hovering just off the reef rather than hiding in it. It lacks bold stripes or spots, so the plain colouring and hovering posture are the main clues.
They typically reach about 11 cm, a small reef damselfish comparable in size to many Chromis species.
No, they pose no threat to divers and generally ignore passing divers while feeding on plankton in the water column.
Site and sighting data is aggregated from diver logs, iNaturalist and GBIF. For taxonomy and conservation status:
Yellowtail Clownfish
3,523 sites
