---
title: Large-Eye Brotula (Brotula multibarbata)
scientific_name: Brotula multibarbata
common_name: Large-Eye Brotula
taxon: Cusk-eels
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-26T20:52:17.047Z
updated: 2026-08-23T14:49:12.055Z
tags: Large-Eye Brotula, Brotula multibarbata, Cusk-eels, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cusk-eels/large-eye-brotula
---

# Large-Eye Brotula (*Brotula multibarbata*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Cusk-eels (*Ophidiidae*)
- **Size:** up to 1 m
- **Depth:** 1-650 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Caves and crevices by day, open bottom at night
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- eel-like body tapering to a point, with dorsal and anal fins merged around the tail
- several pairs of fleshy barbels around the snout and chin
- large eye, brown body, out only after dark
- up to 1 m

Its family holds the depth record for fish.

The cusk-eels include Abyssobrotula galatheae, collected from the Puerto Rico Trench at eight thousand three hundred and seventy meters, which is the deepest fish ever recorded. That is not a fluke of one species: the family as a whole is one of the dominant groups of the deep sea floor, present from the tide line to the bottom of the trenches, and it is far better known from the abyss than from reefs.

This one lives at the shallow end of that range, though it also goes down past six hundred meters. It spends the day jammed into a crevice or the back of a cave and comes out after dark to hunt crabs and small fish over open bottom, feeling its way with several pairs of fleshy barbels around the snout and chin.

The shape is the family's: eel-like, tapering to a point, with the dorsal and anal fins running back and merging around where a tail would be. It is not related to eels at all, and the resemblance is the usual answer to living in cracks.

A meter long, brown, big-eyed, and almost never seen by daylight.

## Also known as

- **English:** goatsbeard brotula, Pacific Bearded Brotula, Bearded Cusk
- **Arabic:** بورتولا ذو لحية الماعز, أنقليس البرسم الملتحي, برسم ملتحي
- **French:** Brotue barbue, Mostelle tropicale, brotule barbe-de-boue
- **Spanish:** Brotula Barba de Carnero, brótula barba de carnero
- **Portuguese:** Brotula-do-Pacífico
- **Czech:** hruj mnohovousá
- **Japanese:** イタチウオ, Itachiuo
- **Chinese:** 多鬚鬚鼬鳚, 多鬚鯰, 多鬚鼬魚
- **Russian:** Многоусая бротула

## Scientific synonyms

- *Brotula borbonica* Kaup, 1858
- *Brotula burbonensis* Kaup, 1858
- *Brotula ensiformis* Günther, 1862
- *Brotula ferruginosus* (Tickell, 1888)
- *Brotula formosae* Jordan & Evermann, 1902
- *Brotula japonica* Steindachner & Döderlein, 1887
- *Brotula jayakari* Günther, 1909
- *Brotula marginalis* Jenkins, 1901
- *Brotula muelleri* Günther, 1909
- *Brotula multicirrata* Vaillant & Sauvage, 1875
- *Brotula palmietensis* Smith, 1935

## Range

Djibouti, Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/cusk-eels/large-eye-brotula)*
*Updated: August 23, 2026*