---
title: African Spadefish (Tripterodon orbis)
scientific_name: Tripterodon orbis
common_name: African Spadefish
taxon: Spadefishes
published: 2024-11-23T21:24:09.452Z
updated: 2026-08-23T14:20:28.930Z
tags: African Spadefish, Tripterodon orbis, Spadefishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/spadefishes/african-spadefish
---

# African Spadefish (*Tripterodon orbis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Spadefishes (*Ephippidae*)
- **Size:** up to 75 cm
- **Depth:** 40-70 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Deeper reef, drop-offs and isolated structure, mostly below forty meters
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer

## How to recognise it

- tall silver disc with faint dark bars, deeper-bodied than the batfishes
- not a Platax: the snout is blunter and the fins less drawn out
- deeper than the other spadefishes, usually below forty meters
- up to 75 cm

Put anything solid in open water and within a season it will have fish around it.

The effect is strong enough that fisheries build on it deliberately: a raft, a buoy, a log or a sunken hull anchored in blue water accumulates first small fish, then the things that eat them, and within months there is a community around an object that provides no food at all. Nobody fully agrees on why. A reference point in featureless water, shade, a place to school without drifting apart, shelter from current, and simple familiarity have all been proposed and none of them explains the whole thing.

Spadefishes are among the most reliable of the fish that do this. They hang in loose groups beside wrecks, pinnacles and mooring lines, tall silver discs turning slowly on the spot, and they will come to a diver for the same reason they came to the wreck.

This species is the deep one and the odd one out, not a Platax at all but the single member of its own genus, deeper-bodied and blunter in the face, usually below forty meters. It runs from here east to the Andamans and it is uncommon everywhere in that range.

## Also known as

- **English:** African spadefish, John dory
- **Spanish:** Paguala Barrada
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-enxada-sul-africano
- **Russian:** Капский эфипп
- **DA:** Afrikansk spadefisk

## Scientific synonyms

- *Tripterodon ornis* Playfair, 1867

## Range

Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Federal Republic of Somalia, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/spadefishes/african-spadefish)*
*Updated: August 23, 2026*