---
title: Viridescent Parrotfish (Calotomus viridescens)
scientific_name: Calotomus viridescens
common_name: Viridescent Parrotfish
taxon: Parrotfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-15T13:49:01.563Z
updated: 2026-08-20T23:14:53.504Z
tags: Viridescent Parrotfish, Calotomus viridescens, Parrotfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/parrotfishes/viridescent-parrotfish
---

# Viridescent Parrotfish (*Calotomus viridescens*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Parrotfishes (*Scaridae*)
- **Size:** up to 27 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Seagrass beds in sheltered bays and lagoons
- **Reproduction:** Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- small parrotfish in seagrass rather than on coral
- mottled green-brown with scattered pale dots
- teeth not fully fused into a beak, unlike the reef parrotfishes
- up to 27 cm

It does not eat coral. This is the parrotfish that stayed in the meadow.

Where the rest of the family evolved a beak for biting rock and a mill for grinding it, this genus kept teeth that are only partly fused and feeds on seagrass, cropping the blades in sheltered bays and lagoons. That is a completely different living: the food is soft, it does not have to be crushed, and it grows in a habitat most parrotfish never enter.

It is also a reminder of where the family came from. Parrotfish are wrasses that specialized in scraping, and the seagrass-feeders sit closer to the starting point - less beak, less mill, less sand production, and none of the reef-shaping consequences the group is famous for.

So a meadow full of these is doing something quietly important. Seagrass grazing keeps blades short and productive, and the animals that do it here are few: turtles, dugongs, urchins, rabbitfish, and this small dotted parrotfish that almost nobody photographs because nobody dives seagrass on purpose.

Books print it as the dotted parrotfish, which is easier to use than the name on this card.

## Also known as

- **English:** dotted parrotfish, Viridescent Parrotfish
- **Arabic:** Ghabban
- **Hebrew:** תוכידג חד-שן
- **French:** Perroquet moiré
- **Italian:** Pesce pappagallo punteggiato, Pesce pappagallo viridescente
- **German:** Blattgrüner Papageifisch
- **Spanish:** Loro Camaleón
- **Portuguese:** Papagaio Camaleao, Peixe-papagaio-pintado
- **Dutch:** Gestippelde Papegaaivis
- **Czech:** ploskozubec puntíkatý
- **Russian:** Пятнистый калотом
- **CA:** Peix lloro pintat

## Scientific synonyms

- *Callyodon viridescens* (Rüppell, 1835)
- *Scarus viridescens* Rüppell, 1835

## Range

Eritrea, Indian Ocean, Mozambique, Red Sea

---

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