---
title: Doublebar Seabream (Acanthopagrus bifasciatus)
scientific_name: Acanthopagrus bifasciatus
common_name: Doublebar Seabream
taxon: Sea breams
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-13T14:55:12.657Z
updated: 2026-08-13T08:24:48.914Z
tags: Doublebar Seabream, Acanthopagrus bifasciatus, Sea breams, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/sea-breams/doublebar-seabream
---

# Doublebar Seabream (*Acanthopagrus bifasciatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Sea breams (*Sparidae*)
- **Size:** up to 60 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Durophage
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Rocky coast, harbors and shallow reef, often in turbid water
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- silver body with two black bars on the head, one through the eye and one behind it
- yellow pelvic and anal fins, dark tail
- steep forehead with thick lips and heavy molars behind them
- length up to 60 cm

A silver seabream to 60 cm (24 in) with two black bars across the head - one through the eye, one behind it - and yellow lower fins. It lives from this sea into the Gulf of Aden and the Persian Gulf, and it is one of the few reef-associated fish that thrives around harbors, jetties and turbid inshore water.

The jaw is the reason. Behind conical front teeth sit rows of blunt molars, and the fish crushes barnacles, mussels, urchins and crabs - the fouling community that grows on any hard surface people put in the sea. A species built to eat what grows on rock does well when we add more rock.

It changes sex on the way up, maturing as a female and switching later, so the largest fish on a jetty is an old male that spent years as something else.

It is a favorite of shore anglers throughout the region and a common food fish. Anyone fishing off a corniche in this part of the world has probably caught one, which is a decent claim to fame for a fish most divers never bother to name.

## Also known as

- **English:** doublebar bream, Two-bar Seabream, twobar seabream, Two-banded Porgy
- **Arabic:** Bint Al-Nokhetha, Faskar, Shanak-donavari
- **Hebrew:** דו-פס אילתי
- **French:** Sar à deux bandes, Pagre double bande
- **Italian:** Pagro bifasciato
- **German:** Doppelband-Meerbrasse
- **Portuguese:** Pargo-palhaço-do-norte
- **Dutch:** Dubbelbandzeebrasem
- **Czech:** mořan dvoupruhý
- **Chinese:** 雙帶棘鯛
- **Russian:** Чернополосый морской карась

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chaetodon bifasciatus* Forsskål, 1775
- *Chrysophrys bifasciata* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Chysophrys bifasciatus* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Holocentrus rabaji* Lacepède, 1802
- *Mylio bifasciatus* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Sparus bifasciatus* (Forsskål, 1775)

## Range

Djibouti, Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, South Africa, Tanzania

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/sea-breams/doublebar-seabream)*
*Updated: August 13, 2026*