---
title: Purple-boned Wrasse (Cirrhilabrus blatteus)
scientific_name: Cirrhilabrus blatteus
common_name: Purple-boned Wrasse
taxon: Wrasse
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-01-01T17:37:32.859Z
updated: 2026-08-20T12:04:16.320Z
tags: Purple-boned Wrasse, Cirrhilabrus blatteus, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/purple-boned-wrasse
---

# Purple-boned Wrasse (*Cirrhilabrus blatteus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** 16 cm
- **Depth:** 40-50 m
- **Diet:** Planktivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Deep rubble slopes and drop-offs, 40 m and below
- **Reproduction:** Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- purple to magenta body with a yellow-orange back
- long trailing pelvic fins in males
- below forty meters, in loose groups above rubble
- up to 16 cm

Fairy wrasses have a divided eye. The cornea in this genus is split into two parts with different optical properties, effectively giving the fish two lenses in one eye - one for the close, sharp work of picking individual plankton out of the water, and one for the wider view.

No other reef fish family is built that way, and it fits what these animals do. A fairy wrasse feeds by taking single copepods from moving water while a group of them hangs above a rubble slope, and it does this at depths where the light is poor. Picking one moving speck out of a current in dim blue light is an optical problem, and this genus solved it in the eye rather than in the brain.

This species is one of the deep ones, living below forty meters, and it belongs to this sea and nowhere else. It is purple and magenta with a yellow-orange back, which under a torch is one of the more spectacular fish on the coast and which almost nobody sees, because forty-five meters is past where most people turn around.

## Also known as

- **English:** Purple-boned Wrasse
- **Portuguese:** Bodião-fada-esplêndido
- **Russian:** Красноморский циррилабрус

## Range

Red Sea

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