---
title: Green Birdmouth Wrasse (Gomphosus caeruleus)
scientific_name: Gomphosus caeruleus
common_name: Green Birdmouth Wrasse
taxon: Wrasse
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-01-01T20:49:50.607Z
updated: 2026-08-14T10:59:00.802Z
tags: Green Birdmouth Wrasse, Gomphosus caeruleus, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/green-birdmouth-wrasse
---

# Green Birdmouth Wrasse (*Gomphosus caeruleus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** up to 32 cm
- **Depth:** 1-35 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Coral-rich reef and slopes
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- long tubular snout, a third of the body length in adult males
- males bright blue-green, females brown in front and pale behind
- swims with the pectoral fins alone, rowing rather than undulating
- length up to 32 cm

A green wrasse with a beak, rowing across the reef with its pectoral fins while the rest of the body stays rigid. The snout is a third of its length in a big male, and it grows longer as the fish ages.

It is a tool for reaching. The birdmouth pushes into holes, under plate corals and between branches for the small crustaceans that shorter-faced fish cannot get at, and the fish works its way along a reef poking into every gap. Nothing else here forages this way.

Females are brown in front and pale behind and have a much shorter snout, so the two sexes read as different fish - the shape is not a species trait but a male one, developed at the sex change.

This is the Indian Ocean and Red Sea species. The Pacific has a barred relative in the same genus, and the two meet nowhere. Thirty-two centimeters (13 in), constantly moving, and a reliable feature of any daytime reef here.

## Also known as

- **English:** bird wrasse, Green Birdmouth Wrasse, Red Sea bird wrasse
- **Arabic:** Muesy
- **French:** Labre oiseau, Labre prince, Labre-oiseau indien
- **Italian:** Labro uccello indiano
- **German:** Blauer Vogel-Lippfisch
- **Spanish:** Vieja trompetera
- **Portuguese:** Bodião trompeteiro, Bodião-passarinho-verde
- **Dutch:** Snavellipvis
- **Czech:** akilolo nosatý
- **Japanese:** Kugibera
- **Russian:** Лазоревый клюворыл
- **DA:** Indisk fuglegylte
- **MAL:** Chulam, ചൂളം

## Scientific synonyms

- *Gomphosus caeruleus klunzingeri* Klausewitz, 1962
- *Gomphosus coeruleus* Lacepède, 1801
- *Gomphrosus caeruleus*
- *Gomphrosus caeruleus caeruleus* Lacepède, 1801

## Range

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

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/green-birdmouth-wrasse)*
*Updated: August 14, 2026*