---
title: Nebulous Wrasse (Halichoeres nebulosus)
scientific_name: Halichoeres nebulosus
common_name: Nebulous Wrasse
taxon: Wrasse
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-28T18:03:25.633Z
updated: 2026-08-19T21:29:23.644Z
tags: Nebulous Wrasse, Halichoeres nebulosus, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/nebulous-wrasse
---

# Nebulous Wrasse (*Halichoeres nebulosus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** up to 12 cm
- **Depth:** 1-40 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Rubble, weed and mixed bottom in shallow water
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- small mottled green-brown fish with a pale belly
- pink-red lines radiating from the eye
- dark blotch on the flank in most fish
- length up to 12 cm

A small mottled wrasse of rubble and weed, twelve centimeters (5 in), with pink lines fanning back from the eye and a smudged dark blotch on the side. It is one of the most common small fish on mixed bottom and one of the least photographed, because it never holds still and there is nothing dramatic about it.

It hunts tiny crustaceans, worms and snails, working the gaps between rubble pieces continuously through the day.

The escape is the family's: straight down into the sand. A startled *Halichoeres* does not swim away, it disappears into the bottom, and it sleeps buried there every night - which is why a rubble slope that was full of small wrasses at dusk is empty ten minutes later.

Color varies enough that identification comes down to the head lines and the blotch. On this coast it is background, and background is worth naming: a reef is mostly made of fish like this one.

## Also known as

- **English:** nebulous wrasse, Clouded Rainbow Fish, Clouded wrasse
- **French:** Girelle nébuleuse
- **Japanese:** イナズマベラ, Inazumabera

## Scientific synonyms

- *Halichoeres nebulosa* (Valenciennes, 1839)
- *Halichoeres reichei* (Bleeker, 1857)
- *Julis nebulosus* Valenciennes, 1839
- *Julis pseudominiatus* Bleeker, 1856
- *Julis reichei* Bleeker, 1857
- *Pseudojulis maculifer* Castelnau, 1875

## Range

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

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/nebulous-wrasse)*
*Updated: August 19, 2026*