---
title: Heavybeak Parrotfish (Chlorurus gibbus)
scientific_name: Chlorurus gibbus
common_name: Heavybeak Parrotfish
taxon: Parrotfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2023-12-24T13:57:00.476Z
updated: 2026-08-13T23:13:53.615Z
tags: Heavybeak Parrotfish, Chlorurus gibbus, Parrotfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/parrotfishes/heavybeak-parrotfish
---

# Heavybeak Parrotfish (*Chlorurus gibbus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Parrotfishes (*Scaridae*)
- **Size:** up to 70 cm
- **Depth:** 1-40 m
- **Max age:** 14 yrs
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Coral-rich reef and slopes
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Hazard:** Poisonous
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- large blue-green fish with a steep blunt forehead in males
- heavy fused beak, pale against the darker head
- females and juveniles dull gray-brown with a pale tail base
- length up to 70 cm

The big parrotfish of this sea, up to 70 cm (28 in), blue-green with a steep blunt forehead and a beak heavy enough to hear from several meters away when it bites.

That sound is a reef being eaten. The fish takes coral rock along with the algae growing in it, mills the mouthful in a set of throat plates and passes out the mineral part as fine sand. A large parrotfish of this size produces something on the order of hundreds of kilograms of sand a year, and on a coral coast a good share of the beach passed through a fish first.

It sleeps in a cocoon of mucus like its smaller relatives, and it changes sex - the blue-green fish with the forehead is a male that began life as a dull brown female.

Because the big ones are the males and the males are the obvious targets, spearfishing hits this species hard, and reefs where these have gone are also reefs where algae start winning. Large fish in some areas carry ciguatoxins.

## Also known as

- **English:** Heavybeak Parrotfish, Red Sea Steephead Parrotfish, Gibbus Parrotfish
- **Arabic:** Ghabban
- **Hebrew:** תוכינון גבנוני
- **French:** Perroquet machoîron, Perroquet mâchoiron
- **Italian:** Pesce pappagallo gibboso del Mar Rosso
- **German:** Rotmeer Buckelkopf-Papageifisch
- **Spanish:** Loro Dentón
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-papagaio-do-Mar-Vermelho
- **Czech:** ploskozubec rudomořský
- **Russian:** Крутолобая рыба-попугай
- **CA:** Peix lloro del paradís

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chlorurus gibbosus* (Rüppell, 1829)
- *Scarus gibbus* Rüppell, 1829

## Range

Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Mozambique, Red Sea

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