The scarlet wrasse earns its name in the water. Terminal-phase males are a vivid uniform red with a distinct white patch behind the pectoral fins and a black bar at the base of the tail, the kind of colouring that looks borrowed from a tropical reef. Initial-phase fish carry red and yellow horizontal stripes along the sides. Then you bring one to the surface in a bucket, and within minutes the colour fades to a dull pink, which is where the alternative name comes from and which is a reasonable summary of what happens to most vivid things removed from their context. Pseudolabrus miles is one of New Zealand's more colourful endemic wrasse and one of the few reef fish that becomes more abundant as you travel south. While most gaudy reef fish peak in warm northern waters, the scarlet wrasse is most common south of East Cape, reaching its highest densities in Fiordland, around Stewart Island, and in the Chatham Islands. Fiordland divers report schools of them trailing hooked fish to the surface, occasionally getting caught on the same hook as the intended target, which is a degree of initiative not commonly observed in prey fish. Like the spotty, this species is a protogynous hermaphrodite. All individuals begin life as females in the initial colour phase. Sex change to terminal-phase male occurs between 150 and 200 millimetres in length at around four years of age. The colour change is complete, with no intermediate males present in the population at any one time. The caudal fin also changes shape, from square-cut in initial-phase fish to lunate in terminal males, a structural revision in addition to a cosmetic one. Feeding is benthic and methodical. Those large, forward-projecting canine teeth are not for display. The scarlet wrasse fossicks through encrusting algae and holdfast material for hermit crabs, brittle stars, and other invertebrates, prising them from the substrate with the direct application of leverage. In southern New Zealand this covers a considerable range of options. The scarlet wrasse is not a targeted food fish, though it is regarded as palatable. Recreational anglers in southern waters encounter it regularly and often wish they encountered it less, as it reliably intercepts baits intended for blue cod and tarakihi. This is not the fish's problem. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing, efficiently and at volume, on reefs where it has been doing so for a very long time.