---
title: Diagonal Shrimpgoby (Amblyeleotris diagonalis)
scientific_name: Amblyeleotris diagonalis
common_name: Diagonal Shrimpgoby
taxon: Gobies
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-20T11:27:08.480Z
updated: 2026-08-17T09:41:14.208Z
tags: Diagonal Shrimpgoby, Amblyeleotris diagonalis, Gobies, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/diagonal-shrimpgoby
---

# Diagonal Shrimpgoby (*Amblyeleotris diagonalis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Gobies (*Gobiidae*)
- **Size:** 11 cm
- **Depth:** 6-40 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Sand and rubble slopes from the coast to outer reef
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- whitish body with five wide brown bars and scattered brown spots
- two thin dark bars running at an angle across the snout and cheek
- yellow anal fin with a blue margin
- never more than a body length or two from the burrow mouth
- up to 11 cm

The hole this fish lives in is not a hole. It is a system: a main shaft, side chambers, more than one entrance, and a lining of coral fragments and shell that the shrimp packs into the walls to stop them falling in.

And it is always falling in. A burrow in loose sand collapses continuously, which is why the shrimp is out at the entrance every few minutes pushing another load of spoil into the open, and why the excavation never actually finishes. Over weeks the whole structure migrates across the sand as one end is abandoned and the other extended.

At dusk both animals go in and the entrance is sealed from the inside, and the sand flat that was full of small barred fish at four in the afternoon looks empty an hour later.

The goby's part of the deal costs it the reef. It has a burrow and a bodyguard, and in exchange it spends its entire adult life within a body length or two of one hole in the sand.

## Also known as

- **English:** Diagonal Shrimp Goby, Diagonal Bar Prawn Goby, Diagonal Shrimp-goby
- **Portuguese:** Góbio-diagonal
- **Japanese:** ハチマキダテハゼ, Hachimakidatehaze
- **Chinese:** 斜帶鈍塘鱧

## Range

Kenya, Madagascar, Red Sea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/diagonal-shrimpgoby)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*