---
title: Halavi Guitarfish (Glaucostegus halavi)
scientific_name: Glaucostegus halavi
common_name: Halavi Guitarfish
taxon: Guitarfish
conservation_status: CR - Critically Endangered
published: 2024-11-04T13:37:29.239Z
updated: 2026-08-23T10:14:50.310Z
tags: Halavi Guitarfish, Glaucostegus halavi, Guitarfish, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/rays/guitarfish/halavi-guitarfish
---

# Halavi Guitarfish (*Glaucostegus halavi*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Guitarfish (*Rhinobatidae*)
- **Size:** up to 1.7 m
- **Depth:** 1-100 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Sand and mud flats, lagoons and shallow bays
- **Reproduction:** Live-bearer
- **CITES:** Appendix II
- **Conservation status:** CR - Critically Endangered

## How to recognise it

- long pointed snout, narrower than in the clubnose guitarfish
- plain sandy brown above, usually half buried with only the eyes showing
- shark-like tail, gills underneath the body
- up to 1.7 m

It eats things that live under the sand, and finding them is the hard part.

A guitarfish spends the day buried with only its eyes and spiracles above the surface. When it hunts it moves slowly across the flat with its snout close to the bottom, and what it is doing is reading: the underside of the snout and head carry the ampullae of Lorenzini, jelly-filled canals sensitive to electrical fields of a few nanovolts per centimeter. Every living animal leaks a field from its muscles and nerves, and a crab or a shrimp under three centimeters of sand is invisible, silent and completely obvious to a ray.

When it finds one it pins the sand with its body, digs with the snout and takes the animal into a mouth on the underside, where flattened crushing plates rather than teeth do the rest. Crustaceans are most of the diet.

This is the guitarfish you are most likely to meet here, on sand flats and in lagoons, sandy brown and usually invisible until it moves off. It is also Critically Endangered: the whole family is fished heavily across its range, and shallow sand is the easiest place in the sea to set a net.

## Also known as

- **English:** Halavi Guitarfish, Halavi ray, Halavi's Guitarfish
- **Arabic:** القرش الحلاوي
- **Hebrew:** גיטרן חלווי
- **Italian:** Pesce chitarra di Halavi, Pesce violino di Halavi
- **German:** Halavs Geigenrochen
- **Portuguese:** Raia-viola-de-Halavi
- **Dutch:** Halavigitaarrog
- **Czech:** pilohřbet halavi
- **FI:** omaninkitararausku, omaninkitarausku

## Scientific synonyms

- *Raia halavi* Forsskål, 1775
- *Raja halavi* Forsskål, 1775
- *Rhinobatos (Scobatus) halavi* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Rhinobatos halavi* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Rhinobatus halavi* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Scobatus halavi* (Forsskål, 1775)

## Range

Egypt

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/rays/guitarfish/halavi-guitarfish)*
*Updated: August 23, 2026*