Brassy Drummer

Kyphosus vaigiensis has an elongate and oval-shaped body with a moderately emarginate caudal fin. The head is small with a short snout and a small, terminal mouth which has small incisor-shaped teeth, there are also teeth on the roof of the mouth and on the tongue. The dorsal and anal fins are not high. The dorsal fin has 10-11 spines and 13-15 soft rays while the anal fin has 3 spines and 12-14 soft rays. The dorsal fin can fold into a sheath. The presence of scales in the interorbital region is an identifying feature. The colour of body is silvery with a bluish shine, marked with 23-29 golden horizontal lines along the body with those above the lateral line curving parallel to it. There is a golden streak below the eye which runs from the snout to just beyion the front edge of the eye. The fins are grey or a slightly darker grey than the colour of the body.

Kyphosus vaigiensis has a distribution that encompasses most of the warmer seas and oceans of the world. In the Pacific Ocean it is found from the western coast of the Americas west coast from Mexico to Panama and across the Pacific to Hawaii, Easter Island, Polynesia, Tahiti, Micronesia as far as Japan and Australia, with records from Hauraki Gulf in New Zealand. In the Indian Ocean it occurs through to the Red Sea, eastern coast of Africa and off Madagascar. In the eastern Atlantic Ocean its range includes the Ascension Island, St Helena and São Tomé Island while in the western Atlantic it is found off the Yucatan, the Caribbean, Bermuda and Trindade and Martin Vaz. It has been recorded in the Mediterranean Sea, the first record in Spain in 1998 and it has been recorded off Sicily, Cyprus, Israel and Turkey.