---
title: Mottled Cardinalfish (Fowleria vaiulae)
scientific_name: Fowleria vaiulae
common_name: Mottled Cardinalfish
taxon: Cardinals
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-08T16:51:03.189Z
updated: 2026-08-19T09:35:11.058Z
tags: Mottled Cardinalfish, Fowleria vaiulae, Cardinals, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cardinals/mottled-cardinalfish
---

# Mottled Cardinalfish (*Fowleria vaiulae*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Cardinals (*Apogonidae*)
- **Size:** 5 cm
- **Depth:** 3-25 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Seagrass beds and rubble in sheltered shallows
- **Reproduction:** Mouthbrooder
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- small mottled brown fish with dark speckling
- ocellus on the gill cover
- in seagrass rather than on coral
- up to 5 cm

Seagrass is not seaweed. It is a flowering plant that went back into the sea: it has roots, it has veins, it flowers and it sets seed underwater, and its ancestors were land plants that had already left the ocean once.

What it builds is the most productive habitat on this coast and the least photographed. A seagrass meadow holds sediment in place, takes carbon out of the water at a rate per hectare that outpaces forest, and shelters a fauna almost entirely separate from the reef next door: pipefish, small cardinalfish, juvenile emperors and rabbitfish, sea hares, and the turtles and dugongs that graze the meadow itself.

It is also the habitat that gets dredged first, because a meadow looks like empty bottom to anyone planning a marina.

This cardinalfish is one of the residents, a five-centimeter mottled brown fish that spends the day among the blades and comes out at night for small crustaceans. Nobody dives seagrass on purpose, which is roughly why nobody has photographed it.

## Also known as

- **English:** Dwarf Cardinalfish, Mottled Cardinalfish, Spotless Cardinalfish
- **French:** Apogon tacheté
- **Japanese:** シボリダマシ, Shiboridamashi

## Scientific synonyms

- *Foa abocellata* (Goren & Karplus, 1980)
- *Foa vaiulae* Jordan & Seale, 1906
- *Fowleria abocellata* Goren & Karplus, 1980
- *Fowleria vaiuli* (Jordan & Seale, 1906)

## Range

Indian Ocean, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cardinals/mottled-cardinalfish)*
*Updated: August 19, 2026*