nemanthias dispar
Small peach-and-orange reef fish common on drop-offs in Sabah and Palau's Rock Islands, in warm water year-round.
A slim, torpedo-shaped fish barely 6 cm long, washed in peach to orange with a faint lilac sheen along the flanks. Look for the translucent, high dorsal fin and the way it hangs at an angle above the reef rather than lying flat like a damselfish. Colour intensity can shift with light, so check body shape and posture as much as tone.
Expect to find loose to dense groups hovering over reef slopes and drop-offs, picking plankton out of the current a few metres off the bottom. They tend to hold station facing into the flow and dip back toward the coral when a diver approaches too fast, so a slow, low approach gets you closer. Most sightings are on the reef face itself rather than in sand or rubble zones, and activity peaks whenever current is running.
Like other anthias, groups are run by a single dominant male over a harem of females, and a female can change sex to take over as male if he disappears from the group.
No clear season shows up in the sightings, and with water sitting between 24.7 and 28.5 C across its range it stays on the reef year-round, so any month works for a dive trip built around it.
Reef neighbours a diver could mistake it for. Use the identification notes above to tell them apart.
Most reliably logged in Sabah, Malaysia and the Rock Islands of Palau, with strong numbers also reported from Nusa Tenggara and Sulawesi in Indonesia and around Luzon in the Philippines. Smaller but consistent counts turn up in Queensland, Australia and near Dili in Timor-Leste, so it is a fixture across a wide arc of the Coral Triangle and its margins.
Mapping where Peach Anthias is logged…
Best odds are in Sabah, Malaysia and around Palau's Rock Islands, with good numbers also in Nusa Tenggara and Sulawesi, Indonesia, and off Luzon in the Philippines.
There is no strong season in the data, and the warm 24.7 to 28.5 C water it favours holds steady year-round, so it is a fair bet on any trip to its range.
Look for a small, slender orange-peach fish around 6 cm long with a tall, translucent dorsal fin, hovering at an angle above the reef rather than sitting flat against it.
They stay small, topping out around 6 cm, so they are easy to overlook against bigger reef fish unless you are scanning the water column just above the coral.
They live in harem groups led by one male, and if that male vanishes, a female in the group can switch sex and take his place, a trick common across the anthias family.
Site and sighting data is aggregated from diver logs, iNaturalist and GBIF. For taxonomy and conservation status:
Pseudanthias huchtii
Red-cheeked Anthias
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