---
title: Pale Dottyback (Pseudochromis pesi)
scientific_name: Pseudochromis pesi
common_name: Pale Dottyback
taxon: Dottyback
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-07T20:48:20.548Z
updated: 2026-08-21T09:44:37.217Z
tags: Pale Dottyback, Pseudochromis pesi, Dottyback, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/dottyback/pale-dottyback
---

# Pale Dottyback (*Pseudochromis pesi*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Dottyback (*Pseudochromidae*)
- **Size:** up to 10 cm
- **Depth:** 10-45 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Deeper reef slopes and rubble, mostly below ten meters
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- pale bluish gray, plainer than any other dottyback here
- the largest of the local dottybacks at around 10 cm
- deeper than the rest, from about ten meters down
- up to 10 cm

Of the eleven dottybacks in this catalogue, ten are found in the Red Sea and nowhere else, or at most a little way past its southern gate. That is an extraordinary figure for a family of reef fish, and it is worth understanding why it happens here.

Dottybacks are built to be trapped. They are small, they never leave the rock for long, they hold tiny territories, and their young spend far less time drifting in open water than most reef fish do. A species that cannot disperse cannot recolonize, and cannot keep exchanging genes with populations outside. Put that animal in a sea that has repeatedly been cut off from the ocean and you get endemics.

That is exactly the Red Sea's history. Every ice age dropped the global sea level enough to nearly close the strait in the south, and what was inside sat in water hotter and saltier than anything outside, several times over. The fish that could not disperse stayed, changed, and became species found only here.

This one is the plainest of them and the largest, around ten centimeters of pale bluish gray, and it sits deeper than its relatives. Nothing about it stands out, which is its own kind of field mark in a family of magenta and gold.

## Also known as

- **English:** Pale Dottyback
- **German:** Bleicher Zwergbarsch
- **Portuguese:** Pseudodonzela-pálida
- **Dutch:** Tweekleurendwergbaars
- **Czech:** sapínovec tmavohřbetý

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/dottyback/pale-dottyback)*
*Updated: August 21, 2026*