---
title: Emperor Snapper (Lutjanus sebae)
scientific_name: Lutjanus sebae
common_name: Emperor Snapper
taxon: Snappers
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-12T22:30:15.286Z
updated: 2026-08-13T20:30:23.834Z
tags: Emperor Snapper, Lutjanus sebae, Snappers, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/snappers/emperor-snapper
---

# Emperor Snapper (*Lutjanus sebae*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Snappers (*Lutjanidae*)
- **Size:** up to 116 cm
- **Weight:** 32.7 Kg
- **Depth:** 5-180 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Deeper reef and rubble slopes; juveniles shallow, near urchins
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Poisonous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- three broad red-brown bands on white in young fish, fading to plain deep red with age
- large heavy body, steep forehead
- juveniles sheltering among the spines of sea urchins
- length up to 116 cm

A big deep-red snapper to 116 cm (46 in) on a rubble slope, and one of the reef's clearest demonstrations that a fish is not one thing for life.

The young are white with three broad chocolate bands and are among the most striking small fish in the sea, which is exactly their problem: they are collected for aquariums by the thousand, sold at a few centimeters, and end up in tanks that a meter-long adult will never fit. The bands blur with age, the white goes pink, and an old fish is plain deep red with barely a trace of the pattern left.

Young fish live shallow and often shelter among the spines of sea urchins - a hard thing to look at without wanting to photograph, and the reason the juveniles are seen far more often than the adults.

Adults are deep-water fish that come up at night to hunt crustaceans and small fish across sand and rubble. They grow slowly, live long, and are heavily fished; large ones in some regions carry ciguatoxins, hence the flag.

## Also known as

- **English:** emperor red snapper, Red Emperor Snapper, Emperor Snapper
- **Arabic:** Hamrah
- **French:** Empereur Rouge, Vivaneau bourgeois, Bourgeois
- **German:** Kaiserschnapper
- **Spanish:** Pargo emperador, Pargo imperial
- **Portuguese:** Caranha-imperador
- **Czech:** chňapal císařský
- **Japanese:** センネンダイ, Sennendai
- **Chinese:** 千年笛鯛, 厚唇仔, 嗑頭
- **Russian:** Трёхполосый луциан
- **DA:** Kejsersnapper
- **TH:** ปลากะพงแดงหน้าตั้ง

## Scientific synonyms

- *Diacope civis* Valenciennes, 1831
- *Diacope sebae* Cuvier, 1816
- *Diacope siamensis* Valenciennes, 1830
- *Genyoroge regia* De Vis, 1884
- *Lutianus sebae* (Cuvier, 1816)

## Range

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

---

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