---
title: Por’s Goatfish (Upeneus pori)
scientific_name: Upeneus pori
common_name: Por’s Goatfish
taxon: Goatfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-14T10:19:58.175Z
updated: 2026-08-13T07:10:49.705Z
tags: Por’s Goatfish, Upeneus pori, Goatfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/goatfishes/pors-goatfish
---

# Por’s Goatfish (*Upeneus pori*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Goatfishes (*Mullidae*)
- **Size:** up to 19 cm
- **Weight:** 70 g
- **Depth:** 10-60 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Open sand and mud away from reef
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- small slim goatfish, pale pink-silver with a yellow stripe along the flank
- dark bands across both lobes of the tail
- pair of short barbels, usually folded under the chin
- length up to 19 cm

A small pale goatfish, under 20 cm (8 in), with a yellow stripe along the flank and dark bands across the tail. It lives on open sand and mud away from the reef, which is why divers rarely see it and trawl nets are full of it.

It hunts the way the family does, probing sediment with a pair of barbels to taste for buried prey, and it works deeper and softer ground than the reef goatfishes - the two do not compete.

The species is better known in a sea it does not come from. It passed through the Suez Canal, established itself in the eastern Mediterranean by the 1950s, and is now a common commercial fish in Israeli, Lebanese and Turkish markets, where it displaced native red mullet on soft bottom. It is named for Francis Dov Por, the biologist who studied that migration and gave the phenomenon its name.

So one of the standard examples in the literature on Lessepsian migration is, here at home, an unremarkable little fish on the sand that almost nobody photographs.

## Also known as

- **English:** Por's Goatfish
- **Hebrew:** אופון חום-פס
- **French:** Barbet à Queue Rayée
- **Italian:** Triglia di Por
- **Greek:** Κατσικόψαρο
- **Turkish:** pasa barbunu
- **Portuguese:** Trilha-espelhada
- **Czech:** parmice Porova
- **FI:** raitaevämullo

## Range

Greece, Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/goatfishes/pors-goatfish)*
*Updated: August 13, 2026*