---
title: Gold-Ribbon Soapfish (Aulacocephalus temminckii)
scientific_name: Aulacocephalus temminckii
common_name: Gold-Ribbon Soapfish
taxon: Soapfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-31T21:15:54.890Z
updated: 2026-08-17T18:57:03.051Z
tags: Gold-Ribbon Soapfish, Aulacocephalus temminckii, Soapfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/soapfishes/gold-ribbon-soapfish
---

# Gold-Ribbon Soapfish (*Aulacocephalus temminckii*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Soapfishes (*Grammistini*)
- **Size:** up to 40 cm
- **Depth:** 20-604 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Rocky reef, in caves and under overhangs; down to great depth
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner
- **Hazard:** Poisonous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- deep blue body with one bold yellow stripe from snout through the eye to the tail base
- stripe runs along the back rather than down the middle of the flank
- in caves and under overhangs, rarely in the open
- up to 40 cm

Blue with a single yellow ribbon down the back, which is a striking thing to find in a cave and the reason most divers who see one remember it.

And a cave is where you find it, if at all. This fish lives under overhangs and inside crevices, comes out at night, and its depth range runs from about twenty meters down past six hundred, which puts most of the species' actual population far below where anyone will ever see it. What divers encounter in the northern Red Sea is the shallow edge of a mostly deep animal.

It is a soapfish, so it carries grammistin in the skin, the bitter lathering toxin that makes the family inedible, and production of it ramps up sharply when the fish is stressed or handled. That is the whole of its danger: nothing is injected and nothing is aimed at you.

It hunts fish and crustaceans, alone, and it is uncommon enough here that a sighting is worth a note in the logbook.

The name honors Coenraad Jacob Temminck, the Dutch zoologist who ran the Leiden museum in the first half of the nineteenth century and whose name is attached to several dozen animals he never saw alive.

## Also known as

- **English:** Goldribbon soapfish, Gold ribbon grouper, Goldribbon cod
- **French:** Le roi la boue, Poisson-savon à ligne d'or, Savon à bande jaune
- **Japanese:** ルリハタ, Rurihata

## Scientific synonyms

- *Aulacocephalus saponaceus* (Valenciennes, 1862)
- *Aulacocephalus schlegeli* Günther, 1859
- *Aulacocephalus schlegelii* Günther, 1859
- *Aulacocephalus temmincki* Bleeker, 1855
- *Centropristes savonaceus* Valenciennes, 1862
- *Centropristis saponaceus* Valenciennes, 1862

## Range

New Zealand

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/soapfishes/gold-ribbon-soapfish)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*