---
title: Red Triplefin (Helcogramma steinitzi)
scientific_name: Helcogramma steinitzi
common_name: Red Triplefin
taxon: Threefin blenny
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-15T21:02:39.524Z
updated: 2026-08-18T08:44:43.096Z
tags: Red Triplefin, Helcogramma steinitzi, Threefin blenny, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/threefin-blenny/red-triplefin
---

# Red Triplefin (*Helcogramma steinitzi*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Threefin blenny (*Tripterygiidae*)
- **Size:** 6 cm
- **Depth:** 0-12 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Vertical rock, ledges and cave roofs in shallow water
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- red to orange body, often on a vertical or overhanging surface
- three separate dorsal fins
- clings upside down under ledges as readily as sitting upright
- up to 6 cm

Look on the walls and the ceilings, not the floor. Triplefins have no swim bladder, so up and down mean nothing to them: a fish that sinks the moment it stops swimming is as comfortable clinging upside down under an overhang as sitting on a flat rock, and this species spends much of its life on vertical faces and cave roofs where almost no other small fish bothers to go.

That opens a whole surface. The undersides of ledges are shaded, current-swept, covered in sponge, hydroid and encrusting growth, and largely unoccupied by grazers. A fish that can hold station there upside down has the place to itself.

It was described in 1980 by Eugenie Clark, who also named the sand-diver on this site and whose work on the Moses sole gave the world its best-known shark repellent, and she named it for Heinz Steinitz, who founded the marine lab at Eilat. Between the two of them a good part of what is known about this sea was written down.

Red on rock, six centimeters, in the top twelve meters. Look up.

## Also known as

- **English:** Red Triplefin

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/threefin-blenny/red-triplefin)*
*Updated: August 18, 2026*