---
title: Red Sea Toby (Canthigaster margaritata)
scientific_name: Canthigaster margaritata
common_name: Red Sea Toby
taxon: Puffers
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2023-12-25T23:19:35.943Z
updated: 2026-08-12T14:01:59.433Z
tags: Red Sea Toby, Canthigaster margaritata, Puffers, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/puffers/red-sea-toby
---

# Red Sea Toby (*Canthigaster margaritata*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Puffers (*Tetraodontidae*)
- **Size:** up to 11.5 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Coral and rubble in sheltered water, close to cover
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Poisonous
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- small pointed-snouted puffer, brown above with dense pale blue spots
- orange-brown lines radiating from the eye
- sharp keel along the belly and a small pointed tail, held closed
- length up to 11.5 cm

A small sharp-nosed puffer, barely 11.5 cm (4.5 in), brown above with dense pale blue spots and orange lines radiating from the eye. It lives here and in the Gulf of Aden and nowhere else, replacing the same-shaped tobies that occupy the rest of the Indo-Pacific.

Size is deceptive. Tobies are pufferfish, carrying the same tetrodotoxin as their large relatives in skin and organs, and they are also unusual in secreting it into the skin mucus - so a fish this small is left alone by predators that could swallow it whole without noticing.

A male holds a small territory containing several females and patrols it all day, driving off other males. Spawning is done in an algae tuft on the bottom: the female lays a small clutch in the algae and neither parent guards it afterward, which is unusual for a fish this territorial.

It feeds on almost anything small and slow - algae, sponges, tunicates, worms, small crustaceans - by nipping with four fused teeth, and a toby working over a coral head is one of the more watchable small fish on a shallow dive.

## Also known as

- **English:** pearl toby
- **French:** Bourse
- **Russian:** Иглобрюх острорылый жемчужный (Иглобрюх маргаритата)

## Scientific synonyms

- *Canthigaster margaritatus* (Rüppell, 1829)
- *Tetraodon margaritatus* Rüppell, 1829

## Range

Indian Ocean, Kenya, Mozambique, Seychelles

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