---
title: Blackeye Thicklip Wrasse (Hemigymnus melapterus)
scientific_name: Hemigymnus melapterus
common_name: Blackeye Thicklip Wrasse
taxon: Wrasse
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-01-23T10:25:29.036Z
updated: 2026-08-20T07:48:02.153Z
tags: Blackeye Thicklip Wrasse, Hemigymnus melapterus, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/blackeye-thicklip-wrasse
---

# Blackeye Thicklip Wrasse (*Hemigymnus melapterus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** up to 40 cm
- **Depth:** 1-40 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Reef, rubble and adjacent sand
- **Reproduction:** Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- very thick fleshy lips, obvious at any distance
- adults with a pale front half and an abruptly dark rear half
- juveniles with a white rear body and a yellow tail
- up to 40 cm

The lips do the work, and they are the first thing anyone notices: thick, rubbery, and pushed forward, on a fish that otherwise looks like an ordinary large wrasse.

They are a seal. This wrasse feeds by taking a mouthful of sand and rubble, closing those lips around it, and processing the load inside the mouth - sorting the animals out, spitting the sediment through the gills, and swallowing the rest. Doing that with thin lips would mean losing half the mouthful on the way in. Fleshy ones let it take a proper bite of the bottom and keep it.

So it works ground that other reef fish give up on: coarse sand, broken rubble, the mixed stuff at the base of the reef where things are buried rather than sitting in the open.

The two halves of an adult do not match. The front is pale gray-green and the rear is abruptly much darker, as though the fish was dipped, and juveniles carry a completely different arrangement with a white rear body and a yellow tail.

## Also known as

- **English:** blackeye thicklip, Blackedge Thicklip Wrasse, thicklip wrasse
- **Hebrew:** עב-שפה בהיר-ראש
- **French:** Labre à grosses lèvres, Mamselle Adèle, Tamarin bicolore
- **Italian:** Labride labbra spesse, Labride occhio nero, Tordo labbra spesse
- **German:** Zweifarben-Bannerlippfisch
- **Spanish:** Tamarin verde
- **Portuguese:** Tamarino verde, Bodião-beiçudo-bicolor
- **Czech:** kněžík tlustopyský
- **Japanese:** タレクチベラ, Tarekuchi-bera, Tarekuchibera
- **Chinese:** 垂口倍良, 垂口鸚鯛, 闊嘴郎
- **Russian:** Губан чернопёрый толстогубый
- **DIV:** Hikaa
- **FIJ:** ilava ki vuaka
- **SMO:** Sugale-lupe
- **SW:** Pono
- **TGL:** Isdang bato, Bankilan, Bungat
- **TH:** ปลานกขุนทองบั้งตรง, ปลานกขุนทองปากหนา, ปลานกขุนทองสองสี

## Scientific synonyms

- *Cheilolabrus magnilabris* Alleyne & Macleay, 1877
- *Halichoeres melapterus* (Bloch, 1791)
- *Hamigymnus melapterus* (Bloch, 1791)
- *Hemigymnus melanopterus* Günther, 1862
- *Hemigymnus melapturus* (Bloch, 1791)
- *Julis beraber* Montrouzier, 1857
- *Julis boryii* Lesson, 1831
- *Labrichthys bicolor* Day, 1871
- *Labrus malapterus* Bloch, 1792
- *Labrus melampterus* Bloch & Schneider, 1801
- *Labrus melapterus* Bloch, 1791
- *Sparus niger* Lacepède, 1802
- *Tautoga dimidiatus* Bleeker, 1849

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Mozambique, Red Sea, Seychelles

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/blackeye-thicklip-wrasse)*
*Updated: August 20, 2026*