Meyer's Butterflyfish

The scrawled butterflyfish has a whitish or bluish-white body that is marked with curved and diagonal black bars on its flanks, on the curved bars the curve is towards the rear. A yellow edged black bar runs through the eye and a similar bar is on the snout, around the mouth. This species has 12–13 spines and 23–25 soft rays in its dorsal fin and 3 spines and 18–20 soft rays in its anal fin. It attains a maximum total length of 20 centimetres (7.9 in).

The scrawled butterflyfish has an Indo-Pacific distribution. It is found along the eastern coast of Africa from Somalia to Durban across the Indian and Pacific Oceans as far east as the Line Islands and Hawaii. Its range extends north to the Ryukyu Islands of Japan and south to the Great Barrier Reef, New Caledonia and Tonga. Vagrants have been recorded in the eastern Pacific Ocean at the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, and the Revillagigedo Islands of Mexico.