Banjos (Banjos banjos) is a saltwater species recorded in Hong Kong, Taiwan. It is found at depths of 50–400 m.
Scientific name: Banjos banjos · Water: Saltwater
Size: up to 20 cm
Banjos is a small deep-water banjofish with a laterally compressed body and a steeply sloping head, living over deep sandy-mud from 50 to 400 m. No season has been verified for it, and it reaches about 20 cm standard length. It is taken off north-eastern and south-western Taiwan on deep-sea boat trips with tenya, jigs or bottom rigs baited with fish flesh. Never abundant, it is nonetheless a marker species of such trips.
The body is deep and strongly compressed with a steep head and an almost straight dorsal profile. The family was long thought to hold this species alone, but two further banjofish were described in 2017 — B. aculeatus from eastern Australia and B. peregrinus from the Timor Sea — so it is no longer monotypic. Colour runs from silvery white to greyish-brown, fading towards the belly, with a blackish front of the head and whitish lips; the second dorsal fin carries a white margin and a large round black blotch at its front, and the caudal fin has a wide brown submarginal band. Smaller fish show several ill-defined dark stripes along the flank and a large black spot at the base of the tail.
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