---
title: Egyptian prawn (Metapenaeopsis aegyptia)
scientific_name: Metapenaeopsis aegyptia
common_name: Egyptian prawn
taxon: Shrimps
published: 2024-11-30T20:16:22.668Z
updated: 2026-08-15T09:42:58.587Z
tags: Egyptian prawn, Metapenaeopsis aegyptia, Shrimps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/egyptian-prawn
---

# Egyptian prawn (*Metapenaeopsis aegyptia*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Shrimps (*Caridea*)
- **Size:** up to 8 cm
- **Depth:** 13-62 m
- **Diet:** Detritivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Sand and mud bottom away from reef
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- typical prawn shape with a long toothed rostrum between the eyes
- sandy brown with fine speckling, translucent when fresh
- buried in sand by day, out over open bottom at night
- length up to 8 cm

A plain sandy prawn of open bottom, eight centimeters (3 in), spending the day buried and the night walking over sand and mud eating detritus. Nothing about it is decorative, and it is in this catalogue as a contrast.

Every other shrimp in this batch is a reef animal that lays a clutch of eggs, carries them under its body until they hatch, and produces young that settle almost immediately. Penaeid prawns do the opposite: they release eggs freely into the water, tens of thousands at a time, and the larvae go through a long series of stages drifting in the plankton before they settle. It is the strategy of an animal that lives on open bottom with nothing to guard.

That difference is also why penaeids are the prawns of the fishing industry and reef shrimps are not - a population that spawns in those numbers can be harvested, and a shrimp that guards fifty eggs under a ledge cannot.

Described from Egyptian waters, which is where the name comes from.

## Scientific synonyms

- *Metapenaeopsis judaensis* Por, 1989

## Range

Aegean Sea, Greece, Indo-Pacific, Japan, Levantine Sea, Madagascar, Maldives, Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin, New Caledonian Exclusive Economic Zone, North Atlantic Ocean, Red Sea, Seychelles, Sri Lanka

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/egyptian-prawn)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*