---
title: Rosette-Spotted Stargazer (Uranoscopus rosette)
scientific_name: Uranoscopus rosette
common_name: Rosette-Spotted Stargazer
taxon: Stargazers
published: 2024-10-28T21:21:52.571Z
updated: 2026-08-23T11:31:20.980Z
tags: Rosette-Spotted Stargazer, Uranoscopus rosette, Stargazers, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/stargazers/rosette-spotted-stargazer
---

# Rosette-Spotted Stargazer (*Uranoscopus rosette*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Stargazers (*Uranoscopidae*)
- **Size:** 28 cm
- **Depth:** 1-27 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Sand and mud bottom, buried
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea

## How to recognise it

- black rosette-shaped spots on the body, which is what it is named for
- eyes and mouth on top of a boxy head, everything else buried
- mouth almost vertical, opening upward
- found in the Red Sea and nowhere else

It buries itself completely and fishes with a worm that grows inside its mouth.

The lure is a flap of tissue developed from the oral valve, the membrane inside the lower jaw, and the fish can wriggle it out past the lip and move it like a worm on the sand. A small fish comes to investigate what looks like a marine worm lying on open bottom. What is actually there is a buried predator with an upward-facing mouth directly underneath, and the strike is a single upward gulp out of the sediment.

Everything about the animal follows from being buried. The eyes are on top of the head, the mouth is nearly vertical, the body is a heavy box that displaces sand and settles into it, and the fish spends its life with a few square centimeters of face exposed. Stargazers are named for looking permanently upward, which is not contemplation but the only direction available.

This species lives in the Red Sea and nowhere else, and it is named for the black rosette-shaped spots scattered over the body, which you will only see if you find one before it settles.

Mostly you will not. This is an animal that divers swim over.

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/stargazers/rosette-spotted-stargazer)*
*Updated: August 23, 2026*