---
title: Morse Hogfish (Bodianus rubrisos)
scientific_name: Bodianus rubrisos
common_name: Morse Hogfish
taxon: Wrasse
conservation_status: DD - Data Deficient
published: 2024-10-28T12:59:34.576Z
updated: 2026-08-20T09:03:03.539Z
tags: Morse Hogfish, Bodianus rubrisos, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/morse-hogfish
---

# Morse Hogfish (*Bodianus rubrisos*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** up to 20 cm
- **Depth:** 50-103 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Deep slopes and drop-offs, below a hundred meters in places
- **Reproduction:** Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** DD - Data Deficient

## How to recognise it

- white body with red bands broken into long and short segments
- yellow wash on the upper body in some individuals
- very deep, mostly below fifty meters
- up to 20 cm

Its common name is morse hogfish, and the pattern is why: the red bands along the body are broken into long and short pieces, dashes and dots, running the length of the fish like a line of code.

It lives deeper than anything else in this group, recorded from fifty meters down past a hundred, and that is not a place where color means what it means on the reef. At a hundred meters there is no red light left at all, so the red and white pattern that looks so striking under a torch is, in the animal's own world, a set of dark bands on pale - which is exactly what disruptive camouflage needs. The showiness is entirely an artifact of how we look at it.

Which is a good reminder for the whole catalogue. Most of the spectacular color on this site is being described under artificial light at close range, and the animal wearing it has never seen itself that way.

It was described relatively recently and is known from a small number of specimens and photographs, all from depth.

## Also known as

- **English:** Morsecode Pigfish, Spotted Line Hogfish, Red-sashed Hogfish
- **Portuguese:** Bodião-de-linhas-vermelhas
- **Japanese:** アカホシキツネベラ, Akahoshikitsunebera
- **Chinese:** 三齒仔, 日本婆仔, 紅娘仔

---

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