---
title: Whip Coral Goby (Bryaninops yongei)
scientific_name: Bryaninops yongei
common_name: Whip Coral Goby
taxon: Gobies
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-21T22:08:13.746Z
updated: 2026-08-17T09:41:14.098Z
tags: Whip Coral Goby, Bryaninops yongei, Gobies, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/gobies/whip-coral-goby
---

# Whip Coral Goby (*Bryaninops yongei*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Gobies (*Gobiidae*)
- **Size:** 3.5 cm
- **Depth:** 3-45 m
- **Diet:** Planktivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** On black coral whips and wire corals, usually in pairs
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- almost transparent body with a line of white marks along the spine
- reddish-brown to violet head and pink-violet eyes
- clamped to a whip coral by a sucker formed from the fused pelvic fins
- usually a pair on one whip, sometimes with a smaller third fish
- up to 3.5 cm

This goby lives on a single whip coral and never leaves it. The whip is a black coral, a bare wire two or three meters long standing in current, and the fish spends its whole life on that one strand, moving up and down it and taking plankton out of the water going past.

Staying there is a problem, since a smooth wire in current offers nothing to hold. Gobies solve it with the pelvic fins, which in this family are fused into a suction cup under the chest. The fish clamps on and stays clamped.

The eggs are the interesting part. There is nowhere on a whip coral to put a clutch, so the pair makes somewhere: they graze a patch of the coral's living tissue off the skeleton and lay the eggs directly onto the cleared wire, then guard the bare patch until they hatch. The host is damaged deliberately, in a small way, to serve as a nursery.

Pairs are usually a male and a female, occasionally with a smaller third fish, and if one of the pair is lost the survivor can change sex to replace it.

## Also known as

- **English:** Whip Coral Goby, Yonge's Sea Whip Goby, Wire Coral Goby
- **French:** Gobie de corail fouet, Gobie du corail-fouet
- **Spanish:** Gobio de coral del mar de Yonge
- **Portuguese:** Góbio-de-gorgônia
- **Japanese:** ガラスハゼ, Garasuhaze
- **Chinese:** 勇氏珊瑚鰕虎, 頦突珊瑚鰕虎, 頦突珊瑚鰕虎魚
- **DA:** Trådkoralkutling
- **KO:** 유리망둑

## Scientific synonyms

- *Bryaninops youngei* (Davis & Cohen, 1969)
- *Cottogobius yongei* Davis & Cohen, 1969
- *Tenacigobius yongei* (Davis & Cohen, 1969)

## Range

Republic of Mauritius

---

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