---
title: Yellowfin Soldierfish (Myripristis chryseres)
scientific_name: Myripristis chryseres
common_name: Yellowfin Soldierfish
taxon: Squirrelfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-27T13:24:33.545Z
updated: 2026-08-22T11:16:40.561Z
tags: Yellowfin Soldierfish, Myripristis chryseres, Squirrelfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/squirrelfishes/yellowfin-soldierfish
---

# Yellowfin Soldierfish (*Myripristis chryseres*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Squirrelfishes (*Holocentrinae*)
- **Size:** 25 cm
- **Depth:** 12-350 m
- **Diet:** Planktivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Deep reef, drop-offs and caves, usually below fifty meters
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- bright yellow fins against a red body, unlike the red-finned soldierfish
- usually below fifty meters
- large eye even by the standards of the family
- up to 25 cm

Yellow fins on a red fish, in a place where neither color exists.

Below fifty meters the light that reaches you is blue-green and nothing else. Red went at five meters and yellow is gone by twenty, so an animal that is red with yellow fins down there is not red with yellow fins to anything looking at it: it is a uniform dark shape with slightly darker edges. Both pigments are, in effect, camouflage that costs nothing and works better the deeper you go.

The colors only exist for us, because we carry the light down with us. Put a torch on this fish at sixty meters and the whole thing switches on, which is why photographs from that depth look nothing like the dive.

This species lives mostly below the depth most divers work, on deep drop-offs and in caves down to three hundred and fifty meters, and comes out at night to feed on plankton like the rest of the soldierfish. The eye is huge even for this family, which is what you would build for hunting particles in near-darkness.

When one does turn up shallow, the yellow fins separate it from every other soldierfish here at a glance.

## Also known as

- **English:** Yellowfin Soldierfish, Golden-finned Squirrelfish
- **French:** Myripristis à nageoires jaunes, Soldat à nageoires jaunes, Cardinal queue jaune
- **German:** Gelbflossen-Soldatenfisch
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-soldado-de-barbatana-amarela
- **Czech:** pruhatec žlutoploutvý
- **Japanese:** キビレマツカサ, Kibirematsukasa
- **Chinese:** 厚殼仔, 大目仔, 瀾公妾
- **Russian:** Серый мириприст
- **CA:** Peix soldat d'aleta groga
- **TAH:** paru u'u nato

## Range

Indian Ocean, South Africa

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