---
title: Longnose Hawkfish (Oxycirrhites typus)
scientific_name: Oxycirrhites typus
common_name: Longnose Hawkfish
taxon: Hawkfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-28T11:04:48.003Z
updated: 2026-08-24T15:19:14.665Z
tags: Longnose Hawkfish, Oxycirrhites typus, Hawkfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/hawkfishes/longnose-hawkfish
---

# Longnose Hawkfish (*Oxycirrhites typus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Hawkfishes (*Cirrhitidae*)
- **Size:** up to 13 cm
- **Depth:** 10-100 m
- **Diet:** Crustacivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Gorgonian fans and black coral on steep current-swept slopes
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- white body crossed by a red grid of lengthwise and vertical lines
- snout drawn out into a long tube
- perched inside a gorgonian fan or a black coral bush
- tuft of filaments on each dorsal spine tip
- up to 13 cm

Its address is not a place on the reef but another animal. This fish lives inside gorgonian sea fans and black coral bushes on steep outer slopes swept by current, and if you are not looking into the mesh of a fan you are not looking for it.

The pattern makes sense once the fish is in place. It is white, crossed by red lines running lengthwise and vertically, a grid laid over the body that repeats the lattice of the fan it sits in. Whether that is why the pattern exists is not settled, but the effect underwater is plain enough: at two meters the fish disappears into the fan and reappears when it shifts.

The snout is the other mark, drawn out into a tube far longer than in any other hawkfish here. It uses it to pick small crustaceans out from between the polyps and to take them from the current, which is what the fish is doing on that exposed slope in the first place. Current delivers food; the fan is the seat.

Like all hawkfishes it has no swim bladder and cannot hover, so it perches, propped on thickened lower rays of the pectoral fins that work as legs among the branches. Each dorsal spine carries a small tuft of filaments at the tip, the cirri the family is named for. It reaches 13 cm.

Be realistic about finding one. It is recorded from 10 to 100 m but is common only below about 25, and FishBase calls it uncommon to rare across most of its range. In the Red Sea it is a deep-wall fish: the regional guide's photograph comes from the Straits of Tiran, and the offshore walls and current-swept drop-offs are where the big fans grow. Once you have found the fan, come back to it, because the fish does not leave.

Pairs hold a fan together and defend it, and they spawn into open water above the reef rather than laying eggs on it. Hawkfishes as a family begin life as females with some later turning male, though that has not been worked out for this species in particular.

## Also known as

- **English:** longnose hawkfish, Long-nose Hawkfish, Long-nosed Hawkfish
- **French:** Poisson Bécasse à Carreaux, Poisson-faucon à long nez, Épervier à Nez Long
- **German:** Langnasen-Korallenwächter, Langschnauzen-Büschelbarsch, Langschnauzen-Korallenwächter
- **Spanish:** halcón narigón, Halcón de Nariz Puntuda
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-falcão-de-focinho-comprido
- **Dutch:** Spitssnuitkoraalklimmer
- **Polish:** Żagiewka długonosa
- **Czech:** štětičkovec obecný
- **Japanese:** クダゴンベ, Kudagombe
- **Russian:** Оксициррит
- **DA:** Langnæset høgefisk
- **DIV:** Gaa boa
- **TH:** ปลาปากเหยี่ยวจมูกยาว

## Scientific synonyms

- *Oxycirrhitus typus* Bleeker, 1857

## Range

Indian Ocean, Madagascar, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/hawkfishes/longnose-hawkfish)*
*Updated: August 24, 2026*