---
title: Masked Puffer (Arothron diadematus)
scientific_name: Arothron diadematus
common_name: Masked Puffer
taxon: Puffers
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2023-12-25T10:44:37.025Z
updated: 2026-08-17T18:06:17.010Z
tags: Masked Puffer, Arothron diadematus, Puffers, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/puffers/masked-puffer
---

# Masked Puffer (*Arothron diadematus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Puffers (*Tetraodontidae*)
- **Size:** 30 cm
- **Depth:** 1-20 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Fringing reef and coral-rich slopes
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Hazard:** Poisonous
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- olive-gray body with a black mask across the eyes
- black patch around the base of each pectoral fin and a dark outline to the mouth
- no scales and no pelvic fins; sculls with the pectoral fins
- usually alone, hovering close to coral
- up to 30 cm

The mask is the field mark and the poison is the story.

Tetrodotoxin blocks the sodium channels that nerves use to fire. A dose measured in milligrams paralyzes an adult, working inward from the face while the person stays conscious, and there is no antidote: treatment is to keep the patient breathing on a machine until the toxin clears. It is among the most potent poisons in the natural world.

The fish does not make it. Bacteria do, and they arrive with what the puffer eats, so the toxin is accumulated and concentrated rather than produced. Puffers raised in captivity on clean feed end up almost free of it, and go back to being toxic if returned to a wild diet. The fish is a container.

Which is why this is a poison rather than a weapon. Nothing is going to be envenomated by a masked puffer; the danger is entirely in eating one, and heat does not destroy it.

On the reef it is one of the most familiar fish on this coast, an olive-gray animal with a black bandit's mask hanging over coral by itself, sculling with its pectoral fins, in no hurry at all. It lives in the Red Sea and nowhere else.

## Also known as

- **English:** masked puffer, Masked Pufferfish
- **Arabic:** Hadroom
- **Hebrew:** נפוחית המשקפיים, נפוחית ממושקפת
- **French:** Poisson-ballon masqué
- **Italian:** Pesce palla mascherato
- **German:** Masken-Kugelfisch
- **Spanish:** Botete enmascarado
- **Portuguese:** Baiacu-mascarado
- **Dutch:** Maskerkogelvis
- **Czech:** čtverzubec maskovaný
- **Russian:** Масковый аротрон
- **CA:** Peix bola emmascarat
- **FI:** Naamiopallokala
- **TH:** ปลาปักเป้าหน้ากาก

## Scientific synonyms

- *Tetraodon diadematus* Rüppell, 1829

## Range

Red Sea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/puffers/masked-puffer)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*