---
title: Glassfishes (Ambassidae)
scientific_name: Ambassidae
common_name: Glassfishes
rank: Family
published: 2026-08-10T14:14:16.818Z
updated: 2026-08-23T21:43:04.030Z
tags: Glassfishes, Ambassidae, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/glassfishes
---

# Glassfishes (*Ambassidae*)

## Quick facts

- **Rank:** Family
- **Scientific name:** Ambassidae
- **Body shape:** Oval - Egg-shaped body, deeper than it is thick - damselfishes, surgeonfishes.
- **Species listed here:** 1

## How to recognise this group

- body so transparent the spine and gut show through
- silvery gut sac and large eye in an otherwise clear fish
- small, deep-bodied and rarely more than a hand long
- hangs in dense shoals in shade, under jetties and in caves

Not one permanent river reaches the Red Sea. No delta, no estuary, no year-round freshwater flow anywhere along either coast, which is a large part of why the water here is as salty and as clear as it is. That single geographical fact is why this category holds one species.

Glassfishes are a family of the boundary between sea and fresh water. Their center of gravity is Asia and Australia, in estuaries, mangrove creeks, coastal lagoons and rivers well inland, and a good number of them never see the sea at all. A coastline with nothing draining into it offers them almost nothing to work with. What the Red Sea has is a scattering of mangrove stands, some shallow sheltered lagoons and a few brackish seeps, and one species on this list.

Where they do occur they occur in quantity and in shade, packed under a jetty, inside a wreck or in the roof of a cave through the day and spreading out at dusk to feed on plankton. Being see-through is the whole of their protection and their species page explains what it does and does not cover.

The family is far better known to people who keep aquariums than to divers, and for an ugly reason. The painted glassfish sold in shops is a freshwater relative that has been injected with dye along the flanks, a procedure most of the fish do not survive for long. The animal itself has nothing on it to color in. That is the point of it.


## Species (1)

- [Dussumier's Glassfish (Ambassis dussumieri)](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/glassfishes/dussumiers-glassfish)

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