---
title: Redeye Goby (Bryaninops natans)
scientific_name: Bryaninops natans
common_name: Redeye Goby
taxon: Gobies
conservation_status: NT - Near Threatened
published: 2024-11-21T09:47:39.531Z
updated: 2026-08-16T06:53:21.977Z
tags: Redeye Goby, Bryaninops natans, Gobies, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/redeye-goby
---

# Redeye Goby (*Bryaninops natans*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Gobies (*Gobiidae*)
- **Size:** 2.5 cm
- **Depth:** 7-27 m
- **Diet:** Planktivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Hovering above branching Acropora on sheltered lagoon reefs
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** NT - Near Threatened

## How to recognise it

- almost completely transparent body about two centimeters long
- bright pink-red eyes, the first thing visible
- yellow-orange gut showing through the body
- hovers in small groups above coral branches instead of perching on them
- up to 2.5 cm

Almost every goby in the sea sits on something. Most of the family gave up the swim bladder and settled onto rock, sand, coral or sponge, and even the coral gobies perch rather than swim.

This one hovers. It hangs in small groups a few centimeters above the branches of an Acropora, holding station against the current all day, which is why Larson gave it the name natans - swimming.

It is two centimeters long and nearly transparent. What you actually see first is a pair of bright pink-red eyes apparently floating on their own, and a yellow-orange smear where the gut is.

The eggs go onto the coral. The pair cleans a patch of a branch and the clutch is stuck down on it and guarded until it hatches.

That complete dependence on live branching coral is why a fish this obscure carries an IUCN listing of Near Threatened. Nobody fishes it and nobody collects it in numbers. It only needs the Acropora to bleach.

## Also known as

- **English:** Redeye Hovering Goby, Hovering Goby, Purple-eye Goby
- **French:** Gobie nain à oeil rouge
- **German:** Violettaugen-Zwerggrundel
- **Portuguese:** Góbio-de-olho-roxo
- **Czech:** hlaváč vznášivý
- **Japanese:** アカメハゼ, Akamehaze
- **Chinese:** 漂遊珊瑚鰕虎, 漂遊珊瑚鰕虎魚

## Range

Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/redeye-goby)*
*Updated: August 16, 2026*