---
title: Red Sea Houndfish (Tylosurus choram)
scientific_name: Tylosurus choram
common_name: Red Sea Houndfish
taxon: Needlefishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-06T12:21:18.029Z
updated: 2026-08-12T22:48:49.210Z
tags: Red Sea Houndfish, Tylosurus choram, Needlefishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/needlefishes/red-sea-houndfish
---

# Red Sea Houndfish (*Tylosurus choram*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Needlefishes (*Belonidae*)
- **Size:** up to 1.2 m
- **Depth:** 0-15 m
- **Diet:** Piscivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Surface water over reef flats and lagoons
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Dangerous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- slim silver fish at the surface with a long toothed beak
- blue-green back and a dark keel along the tail stalk
- usually in small groups, holding station against the current
- length up to 1.2 m

The needlefish of this sea: slim, silver, a meter or so long, lying at the surface in small groups above the reef flat with a beak full of fine teeth. Divers see it from below as a row of dark lines against the light, and snorkelers meet it face to face.

It hunts small schooling fish in the top half meter of water, where a fish looking up sees nothing but glare - which is the whole point of living in a layer everything else avoids. The green bones, incidentally, are real: needlefishes deposit biliverdin in their skeletons, and the flesh and bones of one on a market slab are startlingly green.

The hazard is the same as with its larger relative. A startled needlefish accelerates in a straight line at the surface, and at night a torch beam is what startles it. Injuries here are rare and not unknown.

Juveniles look like a different animal: the lower jaw grows out first and the young fish is a halfbeak for a while, with a short upper jaw, before the two catch up. The same equipment, used two ways, at two stages of one life.

## Also known as

- **English:** Red Sea houndfish
- **Hebrew:** חניתן דו-ימי

## Scientific synonyms

- *Belone choram* Rüppell, 1837
- *Belone robusta* Günther, 1866
- *Esox belone marisrubri* Bloch & Schneider, 1801
- *Tylosurus chorum* (Rüppell, 1837)

## Range

Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin, North Atlantic Ocean, Red Sea

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/needlefishes/red-sea-houndfish)*
*Updated: August 12, 2026*