---
title: Blackstripe Wrasse (Oxycheilinus arenatus)
scientific_name: Oxycheilinus arenatus
common_name: Blackstripe Wrasse
taxon: Wrasse
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-28T13:11:21.075Z
updated: 2026-08-20T08:08:45.828Z
tags: Blackstripe Wrasse, Oxycheilinus arenatus, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/blackstripe-wrasse
---

# Blackstripe Wrasse (*Oxycheilinus arenatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** 21 cm
- **Depth:** 11-90 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Deep reef slopes and rubble, mostly below 30 m
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- slender pale wrasse with a dark stripe from the snout along the body
- pointed head and a slightly forked tail
- on deep slopes rather than reef top
- up to 21 cm

Below thirty meters the wrasse fauna changes over, and most divers never notice because they have turned around by then.

The shallow reef here carries the bright, fast, conspicuous wrasses: bird wrasse, flashers, the striped Halichoeres working rubble. Go down the slope and those thin out and a different set takes over - slimmer, paler, plainer fish that hold position over rubble in dim light and are not competing with anything above them. This is one of them, recorded from eleven meters down to ninety and genuinely common in the band where recreational diving stops.

That band matters more than its photographs suggest. It is cooler than the reef top, it bleaches less, it is fished less, and it holds populations of species that also live shallow. Whether it can reseed the reef above it after a bad summer is an open and important question.

The fish itself is unremarkable to look at: pale, slender, with a dark stripe running back from the snout. Which is roughly why nobody has photographed it here.

## Also known as

- **English:** speckled maori wrasse, Thin-line maori wrasse, Arenatus wrasse
- **French:** Labre moucheté
- **Portuguese:** Bodião-salpicado
- **Czech:** pyskoun arénový
- **Japanese:** ヒイロモチノウオ, Hiiromochinouo
- **Chinese:** 斑點尖唇魚, 斑點鸚鯛, 斑點龍
- **TGL:** Mameng

## Scientific synonyms

- *Cheilinus arenatus* Valenciennes, 1840
- *Cheilinus notophthalmus* Bleeker, 1853
- *Cheillio arenatus* (Valenciennes, 1840)
- *Oxycheilinus notophthalmus* (Bleeker, 1853)

## Range

Indian Ocean, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles

---

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