---
title: Robust Silverside (Atherinomorus lacunosus)
scientific_name: Atherinomorus lacunosus
common_name: Robust Silverside
taxon: Silverside
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-26T22:35:48.521Z
updated: 2026-08-22T16:02:58.961Z
tags: Robust Silverside, Atherinomorus lacunosus, Silverside, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/silverside/robust-silverside
---

# Robust Silverside (*Atherinomorus lacunosus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Silverside (*Atherinidae*)
- **Size:** up to 14 cm
- **Depth:** 1-39 m
- **Diet:** Planktivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Surface water over shallow reef, lagoons and jetties
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- broad silver stripe along the middle of the side, wider than in its relatives
- translucent greenish back, silver belly, large eye
- always in schools, always near the surface
- up to 14 cm

Everything eats these. That is their role, and the school is the answer to it.

A silverside is a small, soft, defenseless fish with no spines, no venom, no armor and nowhere to hide, living in open surface water where it can be seen from every direction. What it has instead is company. Thousands of them move as one body, turning together on a delay of a few tens of milliseconds, which is faster than any of them can consciously react and comes from each fish watching only its immediate neighbors.

What that buys is confusion. A predator has to pick one target out of a shifting mass of identical flashing bodies and commit to it, and every time the school splits and reforms the choice has to be made again. Attack success rates on schooling prey are a fraction of what they are against the same fish alone.

It does not always work. When jacks, needlefish, terns and a couple of trevally arrive together the school is driven to the surface and worked from below and above at once, and that is the boiling water you sometimes see off a jetty at dawn.

This one is the common large silverside here, with a broad silver stripe along the side.

## Also known as

- **English:** hardyhead silverside, robust silverside
- **Arabic:** Sheschusu
- **Hebrew:** אדרית גושמנית
- **French:** Athérine têtu, Athérine têtue
- **Spanish:** Pejerrey cabezón
- **Greek:** Κεφαλοαθερίνα
- **Turkish:** gumus baligi
- **Polish:** Alaneta indyjska
- **Japanese:** ヤクシマイワシ, Yakushimaiwashi
- **Chinese:** 南洋美銀漢魚, 南洋銀漢魚, 硬鱗

## Scientific synonyms

- *Allanetta forskali* (Rüppell, 1838)
- *Atherina affinis* Bennett, 1832
- *Atherina forskali* Rüppell, 1838
- *Atherina forskalli* Rüppell, 1838
- *Atherina lacunosa* Forster, 1801
- *Atherina morrisi* Jordan & Starks, 1906
- *Atherina punctata* Bennett, 1833
- *Atherina puntata* Bennett, 1833
- *Atherinomorous lacunosus* (Forster, 1801)
- *Atherinomorus capricornensis* (Woodland, 1961)
- *Atherinomorus lacunosa* (Forster, 1801)
- *Atherion morrisi* (Jordan & Starks, 1906)
- *Hapsetia pinguis* (Lacepède, 1803)
- *Hepsetia morrisi* (Jordan & Starks, 1906)
- *Hepsetia pinguis* (Lacepède, 1803)
- *Pranesus capricornensis* Woodland, 1961
- *Pranesus forskalii* (Rüppell, 1838)
- *Pranesus lacunosus* (Forster, 1801)
- *Pranesus maculatus* Taylor, 1964
- *Pranesus morrisi* (Jordan & Starks, 1906)
- *Pranesus pinguis* (Lacepède, 1803)
- *Pranesus pinguis mineri* Nichols & Roemhild, 1951
- *Pranesus pinguis ruppelli* Smith, 1965
- *Pranesus pinguis rüppelli* Smith, 1965

## Range

Comoros, Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin, Mozambique, New Zealand, North Atlantic Ocean, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/silverside/robust-silverside)*
*Updated: August 22, 2026*