---
title: Stocky Hawkfish (Cirrhitus pinnulatus)
scientific_name: Cirrhitus pinnulatus
common_name: Stocky Hawkfish
taxon: Hawkfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-28T10:02:44.365Z
updated: 2026-08-14T08:39:39.802Z
tags: Stocky Hawkfish, Cirrhitus pinnulatus, Hawkfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/hawkfishes/stocky-hawkfish
---

# Stocky Hawkfish (*Cirrhitus pinnulatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Hawkfishes (*Cirrhitidae*)
- **Size:** up to 30 cm
- **Depth:** 0-23 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Surge-swept shallow reef tops and boulders
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- heavy blunt-headed fish with brown and white blotches
- tufts of fine filaments on the tips of the dorsal spines
- perches on a rock propped up on thickened pectoral fin rays
- length up to 30 cm

A blotched, heavy-headed fish sitting on top of a boulder in the surge zone, propped up on its own fins and not moving. The largest hawkfish here, thirty centimeters (12 in), and the one that lives where the water is roughest.

Hawkfish have no swim bladder. Instead the lower rays of the pectoral fins are thickened and stiffened into props, and the fish perches on them like a bird on a branch - which is where the family name comes from. Being heavier than water is an advantage in surge: it stays put while everything around it is being thrown about.

From that perch it watches, and drops onto crabs, shrimps and small fish that pass below. The strike is short and downward, which is exactly what a fish sitting above the bottom is built for.

The fine tufts on the dorsal spine tips are the family's signature and are easiest to see in a photograph. Like many reef fish it starts female and can become male, and a large perching fish on a shallow reef top is usually a male holding a group of females.

## Also known as

- **English:** stocky hawkfish, Hard-headed Hawk Fish, White Spotted Hawkfish
- **French:** Empervier de Corail, Epervier de corail, Épervier de corail
- **Italian:** Pesce falco tarchiato
- **German:** Riesen-Korallenwächter
- **Spanish:** Halcón fornido
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-falcão-mármore
- **Dutch:** Reuzen koraalklimmer
- **Czech:** štětičkovec zavalitý
- **Japanese:** イソゴンベ
- **Chinese:** 翼䱵
- **Russian:** Ястреб-рыба пятнистая
- **DA:** Plettet falkefisk
- **FIJ:** bika vatu
- **TAH:** Patui, patu'i

## Scientific synonyms

- *Cirrhites maculosus* Bennett, 1828
- *Cirrhites pinnulatus* (Forster, 1801)
- *Cirrhitus alternatus* Gill, 1862
- *Cirrhitus maculatus* Lacepède, 1803
- *Cirrhitus spilotoceps* Schultz, 1950
- *Labrus marmoratus* Lacepède, 1801
- *Labrus pinnulatus* Forster, 1801

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, New Zealand, Red Sea, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/hawkfishes/stocky-hawkfish)*
*Updated: August 14, 2026*