---
title: Keeltail Needlefish (Platybelone argalus platura)
scientific_name: Platybelone argalus platura
common_name: Keeltail Needlefish
taxon: Needlefishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-06T13:02:29.190Z
updated: 2026-08-13T12:14:22.795Z
tags: Keeltail Needlefish, Platybelone argalus platura, Needlefishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/needlefishes/keeltail-needlefish
---

# Keeltail Needlefish (*Platybelone argalus platura*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Needlefishes (*Belonidae*)
- **Size:** up to 50 cm
- **Depth:** 0-10 m
- **Diet:** Piscivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Surface water over reef and open coast
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- very slim silver fish at the surface with long thin jaws full of fine teeth
- flattened tail stalk with a distinct keel on each side, unique among local needlefishes
- blue-green back, silver flank, dark line along the side
- length up to 50 cm

A very slim needlefish of the surface, half a meter (20 in) long, with a flattened tail stalk carrying a hard keel on each side. Those keels are the identification and the reason for the name: no other needlefish here has them.

A keel does for a fish what it does for a boat - it stabilizes a body that is being driven hard and steers badly. Needlefishes accelerate along the surface in straight lines and leave the water regularly, and the keels keep the tail tracking through it.

The skeleton is green. Needlefishes deposit biliverdin, a bile pigment, in their bones, and a filleted fish is startlingly green inside - harmless, and enough to put off anyone who has not seen it before.

It hunts small fish in the top half meter, where the glare from above hides it from below, and it spawns by attaching eggs to floating weed with fine sticky threads. Like its larger relatives it is a hazard around lights at night, when a startled fish will run in a straight line at the surface without checking what is in the way.

## Scientific synonyms

- *Belone platura* Rüppell, 1837
- *Platybelone argalus platura* (Rüppell, 1837)

---

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