---
title: Hurghada Sea Star (Fromia ghardaqana)
scientific_name: Fromia ghardaqana
common_name: Hurghada Sea Star
taxon: Starfish
published: 2026-08-06T16:37:23.085Z
updated: 2026-08-20T17:09:46.087Z
tags: Hurghada Sea Star, Fromia ghardaqana, Starfish, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/echinoderms/starfish/hurghada-sea-star
---

# Hurghada Sea Star (*Fromia ghardaqana*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Starfish (*Asteroidea*)
- **Size:** up to 8 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Detritivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Hard coral surfaces and rubble
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea

## How to recognise it

- small bright red to orange star
- flat plates over the whole upper surface
- arm tips often darker than the disc
- diameter up to 8 cm

A small, brilliantly colored star to about 8 cm (3 in) across, red through orange, its upper surface tiled with flat plates that give it a neat mosaic look rather than the granular or spiny finish of larger species. Arm tips are often darker than the disc, and the whole animal is stiff and flattened, built to lie against rock rather than to hump over it.

It lives on hard coral surfaces and rubble from about 1 m to 30 m (3 to 100 ft), grazing the film of algae and detritus that coats them. Mortensen described it in 1938 from material collected at Hurghada, and the epithet is that town's older name, Ghardaqa - a rare case of a reef animal carrying an Egyptian place name. Records cluster almost entirely in this sea and the Gulf of Aden, which makes it about as close to a local endemic as an echinoderm gets here. Small, common and photogenic, it is one of the first stars a diver learns to recognize on these reefs.

## Also known as

- **Japanese:** ソメワケジュズベリヒトデ
- **Russian:** Хургадская звезда

## Range

Red Sea

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/echinoderms/starfish/hurghada-sea-star)*
*Updated: August 20, 2026*