---
title: Gulf Torpedo (Torpedo sinuspersici)
scientific_name: Torpedo sinuspersici
common_name: Gulf Torpedo
taxon: Electric ray
conservation_status: DD - Data Deficient
published: 2024-01-16T00:35:55.873Z
updated: 2026-08-13T21:06:31.654Z
tags: Gulf Torpedo, Torpedo sinuspersici, Electric ray, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/rays/electric-ray/gulf-torpedo
---

# Gulf Torpedo (*Torpedo sinuspersici*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Electric ray (*Torpedinidae*)
- **Size:** up to 130 cm
- **Depth:** 1-200 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Sand and rubble near reef, buried by day
- **Reproduction:** Live-bearer, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Dangerous
- **Conservation status:** DD - Data Deficient

## How to recognise it

- round disc patterned in orange, cream and brown rosettes, more colorful than its marbled relative
- short thick tail with two dorsal fins and a paddle tail
- no tail spine
- width up to 60 cm

The colorful one. Where the marbled electric ray is brown on cream, this species carries rosettes of orange, gold and dark brown, and a fresh one on clean sand is genuinely beautiful - which is unhelpful, because it is buried nine times out of ten.

It carries the same equipment: paired electric organs behind the eyes, built from stacked plates of modified muscle, capable of stunning a fish outright. The ray hunts at night, cruising slowly over sand, and drops onto prey to discharge and enfold it in one motion.

Divers meet it as a shape that materializes out of the bottom when it moves. It does not flee far and it does not threaten; the risk is entirely about hands and knees placed on sand that turns out to be an animal.

Its range is this sea, the Gulf and the western Indian Ocean - a regional species rather than a widespread one, and the reason a card exists for two electric rays that look, to a first glance, like the same fish.

## Also known as

- **English:** marbled electric eel, Gulf Torpedo, Marbled Electric Ray
- **Arabic:** شفنين رعاد رخامي
- **Hebrew:** חשמלן הכתמים
- **French:** Torpille auréolée
- **Italian:** Torpedine variabile
- **Czech:** parejnok perský
- **Russian:** Разноцветный электрический скат

## Scientific synonyms

- *Torpedo sinus-persi* Olfers, 1831
- *Torpedo zugmayeri* Engelhardt, 1912

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, South Africa, Tanzania

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/rays/electric-ray/gulf-torpedo)*
*Updated: August 13, 2026*