---
title: Bearded Scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis barbata)
scientific_name: Scorpaenopsis barbata
common_name: Bearded Scorpionfish
taxon: Scorpionfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-09-08T20:40:44.882Z
updated: 2026-08-14T19:29:17.707Z
tags: Bearded Scorpionfish, Scorpaenopsis barbata, Scorpionfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/scorpionfishes/bearded-scorpionfish
---

# Bearded Scorpionfish (*Scorpaenopsis barbata*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Scorpionfishes (*Scorpaenidae*)
- **Size:** up to 27 cm
- **Depth:** 1-29 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Coral rock and rubble on shallow reef
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Dangerous, Venomous
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- dense fringe of skin flaps along the lower jaw, like a beard
- mottled red-brown to gray, matching whatever it sits on
- large pectoral fins spread flat against the rock
- length up to 27 cm

A heavy mottled scorpionfish with a fringe of skin flaps hanging off its lower jaw, sitting on coral rock and not moving. Twenty-seven centimeters (11 in), and it belongs to this sea and the Gulf of Aden alone.

The beard is camouflage where camouflage is hardest. A straight jaw line is the one edge that reads as an animal against textured rock, and the flaps break it up completely; the same trick appears in the fringes over its eyes and along its flanks.

It hunts by absolute stillness, which is unusual even among ambush predators. A scorpionfish will let a diver approach to within centimeters rather than move, because moving is what gives it away - and that is why so many stings are to hands and knees rather than to anything else.

The strike takes about fifteen milliseconds. The mouth opens, the head expands, and a small fish that was swimming past is inside before its nervous system has registered a change. Everything else about this animal is arranged around that one movement.

## Also known as

- **English:** Bearded Scorpionfish

## Scientific synonyms

- *Scorpaena barbata* Rüppell, 1838
- *Scorpaenopsis barbatus* (Rüppell, 1838)

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Red Sea

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/scorpionfishes/bearded-scorpionfish)*
*Updated: August 14, 2026*