---
title: Luther's Shrimpgoby (Cryptocentrus lutheri)
scientific_name: Cryptocentrus lutheri
common_name: Luther's Shrimpgoby
taxon: Gobies
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-23T08:30:20.990Z
updated: 2026-08-25T09:11:22.813Z
tags: Luther's Shrimpgoby, Cryptocentrus lutheri, Gobies, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/luthers-shrimpgoby
---

# Luther's Shrimpgoby (*Cryptocentrus lutheri*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Gobies (*Gobiidae*)
- **Size:** up to 11 cm
- **Depth:** 1-12 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** sand and rubble bottoms near reef
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- head marked with rows of oval blue spots
- dark brown bars across the body
- blue dots low on the belly
- guards a burrow mouth with a snapping shrimp
- up to 11 cm

Everyone repeats that the shrimp goby warns its shrimp. This species is one of the three that were used to prove how the warning actually gets there.

In the field, gobies were confronted with a slowly approaching model predator and then with a live predator held in place, and their partners were watched. The signal turned out to be a rapid flick of the tail, and the critical result was negative: no warning was given unless the shrimp's antenna was in contact with the fish. The alarm is not a visual display and not a sound. It is a mechanical pulse delivered along one antenna to an animal that can barely see. Three pairs were tested - this goby with Alpheus djiboutensis, Steinitz' shrimpgoby with a second Alpheus, and the silverspot shrimpgoby with a third - and all three worked the same way.

So when you watch a burrow, watch the antenna. The shrimp comes out with a bulldozer load of sand, one antenna laid along the goby's flank the whole time. The moment the contact breaks the shrimp is working blind, and it does not stay out long.

Identification comes down to the head. It is marked with rows of oval blue spots, arranged in lines rather than scattered, over a body crossed by dark brown bars with blue dots low on the belly. At up to 11 centimeters it is a large goby, and the arrangement of the blue on the head is what separates it from the ninebar shrimpgoby, which is spotted more evenly.

It lives on sand and rubble near reef, from about a meter down to 12, and runs from this sea east to the Persian Gulf. In the Red Sea it has been photographed at Marsa Nakari and Sharm El Sheikh. It is not the shrimp goby you see most often here, but it is shallow enough that a slow swim over sand in a few meters of water is a real chance at one.

## Also known as

- **English:** Luther's goby, Luther's Prawn-Goby
- **Arabic:** قوبيون القريدس لوثر
- **Portuguese:** Góbio-listrado-do-Mar-Vermelho
- **Czech:** hlaváč Lutherův

## Range

Red Sea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/luthers-shrimpgoby)*
*Updated: August 25, 2026*