---
title: Malindi Parrotfish (Scarus viridifucatus)
scientific_name: Scarus viridifucatus
common_name: Malindi Parrotfish
taxon: Parrotfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-15T19:57:16.605Z
updated: 2026-08-20T23:23:05.132Z
tags: Malindi Parrotfish, Scarus viridifucatus, Parrotfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/parrotfishes/malindi-parrotfish
---

# Malindi Parrotfish (*Scarus viridifucatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Parrotfishes (*Scaridae*)
- **Size:** 45 cm
- **Weight:** 600 g
- **Depth:** 1-15 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Shallow reef flats and coral-rich ground
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- terminal males green with a blue-green beak and dark-edged scales
- initial-phase fish gray-brown, plain
- shallow water, mostly above fifteen meters
- up to 45 cm

Take the parrotfish off a reef and the reef turns into a lawn.

Coral and algae are in permanent competition for the same hard ground, and algae grow far faster. What keeps them in check is grazing, and on most tropical reefs the heavy lifting is done by parrotfish and surgeonfish working every surface all day. Remove them - and parrotfish are heavily fished across much of their range, being large, slow, and easy to spear at night in their cocoons - and the algae take over within a few seasons. Coral larvae cannot settle on an algal mat, so the reef stops replacing itself.

That has been demonstrated the hard way in the Caribbean, where the loss of large grazers turned coral reefs into algal beds over about two decades, and it is the main argument for protecting a fish that is otherwise unremarkable to look at.

This one is a mid-sized shallow-water species, green in terminal males with a blue-green beak, and plain gray-brown in the initial phase. It works reef flats and shallow coral, and it is doing the same job as all of them: eating the competition, one scraped mouthful at a time.

## Also known as

- **English:** Greenlip Parrotfish, Green-snout Parrotfish, Roundhead parrotfish
- **French:** Perroquet tête ronde
- **Italian:** Pesce pappagallo labbra verdi
- **Spanish:** Loro calabaza
- **Portuguese:** Papagaio cabeça redonda, Peixe-papagaio-de-lábio-verde
- **Czech:** ploskozubec zelenonosý
- **CA:** Peix lloro llavi verd
- **TH:** ปลานกแก้วจมูกเขียว

## Scientific synonyms

- *Callyodon malindiensis* Smith, 1956
- *Callyodon viridifucatus* Smith, 1956
- *Callyodon viridifurcatus* Smith, 1956
- *Scarus viridifurcatus* (Smith, 1956)

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Seychelles, Tanzania

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/parrotfishes/malindi-parrotfish)*
*Updated: August 20, 2026*