---
title: Common Remora (Remora remora)
scientific_name: Remora remora
common_name: Common Remora
taxon: Remoras
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-27T23:04:41.884Z
updated: 2026-08-13T20:27:14.694Z
tags: Common Remora, Remora remora, Remoras, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/remoras/common-remora
---

# Common Remora (*Remora remora*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Remoras (*Echeneidae*)
- **Size:** up to 86 cm
- **Depth:** 0-200 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Attached to sharks, rays, turtles and boats
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- flat oval sucking disc on top of the head, ridged like a shoe sole
- dark uniform brown-gray body, slim and firm
- attached upside down under a shark, or swimming free in short bursts
- length up to 86 cm

The fish stuck to the underside of a shark, usually upside down, riding for free. Eighty-six centimeters (34 in) at its largest and a fine piece of engineering at any size.

The disc on its head is a dorsal fin. Not a modified sucker that happens to sit there - the spines of the first dorsal fin flattened, split and rotated over millions of years into rows of movable slats. The remora slides backward to seat it, the slats lift to make the seal, and the harder the host pulls away the tighter the grip becomes. Measured attachment forces run to many times the fish's own weight, and researchers have spent years copying the design for underwater robots.

It is not a parasite. It eats scraps from the host's meals, plankton, and the parasitic copepods off the host's skin - which is a service, not a theft - and it detaches to feed and reattaches at will.

Remoras will try a diver, a boat hull, and each other. Being ridden by one is harmless and briefly alarming, and the fish is easier to discourage by moving into open water than by pulling at it, since pulling is precisely what its disc is built to defeat.

## Also known as

- **English:** Brown remora, common remora, Offshore remora
- **Hebrew:** רמורה רמורה
- **French:** rémora noir, Rémora des Requins, Rémora commun
- **German:** Gemeiner Schiffshalter
- **Spanish:** rémora tiburonera, Sapito Común, Rémora
- **Greek:** Ρεμόρα
- **Turkish:** klavuz baligi, vantuz
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-agarrador, Peixe-pegador, Peixe-pegajoso
- **Swedish:** sugfisk, remora
- **Polish:** Remora
- **Czech:** štítovec lodní
- **Japanese:** ナガコバン, Nagakoban
- **Chinese:** 短印仔魚, 短印魚, 短鮣
- **Russian:** акулья ремора, Обыкновенная рыба-прилипало
- **DA:** Almindelig sugefisk
- **IS:** Dvalfiskur
- **MLT:** Remora komuni, Buwahhal, Pixxitmun
- **NNO:** sugefisk
- **NO:** sugefisk
- **SL:** Prilep
- **SQI:** peshku me ventuzë, Peshk venduze
- **TAH:** ti'aiti'auri

## Scientific synonyms

- *Echeneis borboniensis* Guichenot, 1863
- *Echeneis bourboniensis* Duméril, 1858
- *Echeneis nubifera* Tanaka, 1915
- *Echeneis parva* Gronow, 1854
- *Echeneis postica* Poey, 1860
- *Echeneis remeligo* Guichenot, 1863
- *Echeneis remiligo* Guichenot, 1863
- *Echeneis remora* Linnaeus, 1758
- *Echeneis remoroides* Bleeker, 1855
- *Echeneis squalipeta* Daldorff, 1793

## Range

Comoros, Gulf of Mexico, Indian Ocean, Madagascar, Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin, New Zealand, North Atlantic Ocean, Seychelles, South Africa

---

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