---
title: Flat Needlefish (Ablennes hians)
scientific_name: Ablennes hians
common_name: Flat Needlefish
taxon: Needlefishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-06T12:10:35.060Z
updated: 2026-08-13T20:12:56.737Z
tags: Flat Needlefish, Ablennes hians, Needlefishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/needlefishes/flat-needlefish
---

# Flat Needlefish (*Ablennes hians*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Needlefishes (*Belonidae*)
- **Size:** up to 140 cm
- **Weight:** 4.8 Kg
- **Depth:** 0-10 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Surface water over reef and lagoon
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Dangerous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- extremely long thin body, flattened side to side rather than round
- long beak of a jaw, both halves the same length, full of needle teeth
- silver with faint dark bars on the flank
- hangs motionless just under the surface, often mistaken for a floating stick
- length up to 140 cm

A meter and a half (5 ft) of silver wire hanging just under the surface, so thin from above that it disappears entirely and so still that snorkelers swim past without registering it. The body is flattened side to side, which is what separates this species from the round-bodied houndfishes.

It hunts by lying in the surface film and taking small fish from below with a sideways sweep of the beak. The jaws are studded with fine teeth angled backwards; nothing that goes in comes out again.

The danger flag on this card is not about the teeth. Needlefish leap when startled, they leap toward light, and at that speed a fish this size is a spear driven by its own tail. Injuries and deaths on record across the tropics involve night fishing, lamps and open boats - never a diver on a reef in daylight. If you are on the surface at night with a torch, keep the beam out of the water and keep it away from your body.

They are a surface species through and through: they spawn among floating weed, gluing eggs to it with fine filaments, and the young live in the drifting rafts until they are big enough to hold station.

## Also known as

- **English:** flat needlefish, Barred Needle Fish, Barred Long-tom
- **Arabic:** سمك الإبرة المسطح, سمك الإبرة المقلم, Musaffaha
- **French:** Orphie coutelas, Orphie plate
- **Spanish:** agujón sable, sauro atlántico
- **Portuguese:** agulha, agulha-da-areia, agulha-lisa
- **Czech:** jehlice obecná
- **Japanese:** ハマダツ, Hamadatsu
- **Chinese:** 倒吊學, 學仔, 扁鶴鱵
- **Russian:** Лентовидный сарган, плоскотелый сарган, пятнистый сарган
- **DA:** Flad hornfisk
- **KO:** 물동갈치
- **TH:** ปลากระทุงเหวบั้ง, ปลาเต็กเล้ง

## Scientific synonyms

- *Ablenes hians* (Valenciennes, 1846)
- *Ablennes hians pacificus* Walford, 1936
- *Ablennes pacificus* Walford, 1936
- *Athlennes hians* (Valenciennes, 1846)
- *Belone hians* Valenciennes, 1846
- *Belone maculata* Poey, 1860
- *Belone melanostigma* Valenciennes, 1846
- *Belone schismatorhynchus* Bleeker, 1850
- *Blennes hians* (Valenciennes, 1846)
- *Mastaccembelus melanostigma* (Valenciennes, 1846)
- *Mastacembelus fasciatus* Bleeker, 1872
- *Tylosurus caeruleofasciatus* Stead, 1908
- *Tylosurus hians* (Valenciennes, 1846)
- *Tylosurus schismatorhynchus* (Bleeker, 1850)

## Range

Comoros, Federal Republic of Somalia, Gulf of Mexico, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, New Zealand, North Atlantic Ocean, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/needlefishes/flat-needlefish)*
*Updated: August 13, 2026*