---
title: Egyptian Sea Star (Gomophia egyptiaca)
scientific_name: Gomophia egyptiaca
common_name: Egyptian Sea Star
taxon: Starfish
published: 2023-12-26T16:03:06.830Z
updated: 2026-08-13T21:02:54.631Z
tags: Egyptian Sea Star, Gomophia egyptiaca, Starfish, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/echinoderms/starfish/egyptian-sea-star
---

# Egyptian Sea Star (*Gomophia egyptiaca*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Starfish (*Asteroidea*)
- **Size:** up to 30 cm
- **Depth:** 2-80 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Rubble and reef, in the open at night
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Poisonous

## How to recognise it

- five stout arms covered in blunt rounded knobs, red-orange on cream
- knobs arranged in regular rows along each arm
- arms often unequal - regrowing after damage
- diameter up to 30 cm

A knobbly five-armed star in orange and cream, out on the rubble at night, with the knobs arranged in neat rows down each arm. Thirty centimeters (12 in) across, and the reef's most obvious example of a body that treats its own parts as replaceable.

Arms are expendable. A star caught by a predator sheds the arm it is held by and walks away, and regrows it over months - which is why so many individuals have arms of four different lengths at once. The animal is doing accounting we would find alarming: losing a fifth of the body is cheaper than losing all of it.

Underneath, hundreds of tube feet run in grooves along each arm, driven by a hydraulic system that has no heart, no brain and no blood - just seawater pumped through a network of canals. There is no head, and no front: the star moves in whichever direction an arm decides to lead.

It feeds at night on sponges, encrusting animals and detritus, digesting some prey by pushing its stomach out over it. Like other sea stars it carries saponins in the body wall, so the same rule applies as for sea cucumbers: hands off the face, and put it back the way you found it.

## Also known as

- **English:** Egyptian Sea Star
- **Hebrew:** שביטן מצרי
- **French:** Etoile de mer égyptienne
- **Japanese:** トガリアライボヒトデ
- **Russian:** Египетская звезда

## Scientific synonyms

- *Linckia aegyptiaca* von Martens, 1866
- *Linckia desjardinsi* (Michelin, 1844)
- *Nardoa aegyptiaca* Sladen, 1889
- *Oreaster desjardinsi* Michelin, 1844
- *Scytaster aegyptiaca* (Gray, 1840)
- *Scytaster zodiacalis* Müller & Troschel, 1842

## Range

Eastern Africa & Madagascar, Indian Ocean, New Caledonian Exclusive Economic Zone, Palau, Red Sea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/echinoderms/starfish/egyptian-sea-star)*
*Updated: August 13, 2026*