---
title: Redcoat Squirrelfish (Sargocentron rubrum)
scientific_name: Sargocentron rubrum
common_name: Redcoat Squirrelfish
taxon: Squirrelfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-27T13:02:49.365Z
updated: 2026-08-22T11:07:57.671Z
tags: Redcoat Squirrelfish, Sargocentron rubrum, Squirrelfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/squirrelfishes/redcoat-squirrelfish
---

# Redcoat Squirrelfish (*Sargocentron rubrum*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Squirrelfishes (*Holocentrinae*)
- **Size:** 27 cm
- **Depth:** 1-84 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Reef, wrecks, harbors and rocky bottom, often in turbid water
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Hazard:** Venomous
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- red and silver-white stripes running the length of the body
- dark stripe at the base of the tail
- tolerant of murky water, common around wrecks and harbors
- up to 27 cm

This fish walked out of the Red Sea and took over a piece of the Mediterranean.

When the Suez Canal opened in 1869 it connected two seas that had been separated for millions of years, and species began moving north through it. Well over four hundred have made the crossing, almost all of them in that direction, and the process is named after the canal's builder: Lessepsian migration. This squirrelfish was one of the early and most successful arrivals, reported from the Levant in the first half of the twentieth century and now a common commercial fish along the eastern Mediterranean coast.

What makes it able to do that is visible in where it lives here. It tolerates murky water, silt, harbors and wrecks better than most reef fish, it eats a wide range of bottom invertebrates, and it does not need coral. A species with those tolerances lands in a new sea and finds it usable rather than hostile.

The consequences are not neutral. Some natives have been displaced, some fisheries rebuilt around the newcomers, and the exchange runs one way because the Red Sea is warmer and saltier than the Mediterranean, so the door is easier to walk through northbound.

Here it is the striped one with a dark bar at the base of the tail, and like its relatives it carries a venomous cheek spine.

## Also known as

- **English:** redcoat, Red Striped Squirrelfish, Red Soldierfish
- **Hebrew:** ברקן אדום
- **French:** Poisson-écureuil de Mer Rouge, Holocentre rouge, Marignan Rouget
- **Spanish:** Candil Rubio
- **Greek:** Ακανθόπερκα
- **Turkish:** Hindistan baligi, asker baligi, naylon baligi
- **Portuguese:** Esquilo-vermelho
- **Japanese:** アヤメエビス, Ayameebisu
- **Chinese:** 瀾公妾, 点带棘鳞鱼, 金鱗甲

## Scientific synonyms

- *Adioryx ruber* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Holocenthrus aureoruber* Fowler, 1904
- *Holocentrum dimidicauda* Marshall, 1953
- *Holocentrum orientale* Cuvier, 1829
- *Holocentrum rubrum* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Holocentrus alboruber* Lacepède, 1802
- *Holocentrus ruber* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Holocentrus rubrum* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Perca rubra* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Sargocentoron rubrum* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Sargocentron ruber* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Sargocentrum rubrum* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Sciaena rubra* Forsskål, 1775

## Range

Djibouti, East Africa, Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Greece, Kenya, Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin, Mozambique, North Atlantic Ocean, Red Sea, Tanzania

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