---
title: White Stinger (Macrorhynchia philippina)
scientific_name: Macrorhynchia philippina
common_name: White Stinger
taxon: Hydrozoans
published: 2023-12-27T09:17:37.430Z
updated: 2026-08-15T22:24:22.473Z
tags: White Stinger, Macrorhynchia philippina, Hydrozoans, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/hydrozoans/white-stinger
---

# White Stinger (*Macrorhynchia philippina*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Hydrozoans (*Hydrozoa*)
- **Size:** colonies to 20 cm tall
- **Depth:** 1-40 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Reef, wrecks and pilings with current
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Budding
- **Hazard:** Dangerous, Venomous, Poisonous

## How to recognise it

- white to cream feathery plumes, stiff rather than soft, in flat fans
- regular side branches giving a fern-like outline
- grows on wrecks, ropes and shaded reef with current
- colonies to 20 cm tall

A stiff white fern growing off a wreck or a shaded rock, and one of the most reliable ways to get hurt on this reef.

It is a hydroid, not a plant and not a coral: a colony of tiny polyps sharing a horny skeleton, and closer to jellyfish than to anything it grows among. Among the feeding polyps sit defensive ones loaded with nematocysts, and they fire on contact through skin that a stony coral would not mark.

The sting arrives seconds late, burns for hours, and often raises a welt that itches for days and reappears weeks later. It is the classic injury of a diver steadying themselves on a wreck or brushing a line, and of anyone in a shorty. Rinse with seawater or vinegar, never fresh water, lift anything clinging off with a card edge rather than rubbing, and use hot water at about 45 C (113 F) for the pain.

It grows where current runs, which is exactly where a diver wants to hold on. That combination is the whole reason this card carries a danger flag.

## Also known as

- **English:** stinging hydroid, White Stinging Sea Fan, white stinger
- **French:** Hydraire buisson ardent
- **German:** Fieder-Hydrozoe
- **Spanish:** Hidroide Picador
- **Portuguese:** Feto-do-mar-urticante
- **Czech:** pohárovka žahavá
- **Japanese:** ナミラウミヒノキ, マニラウミヒノキ
- **Russian:** Макроринхия филиппинская

## Scientific synonyms

- *Aglaophenia (Macrorhynchia) perforata* Kirchenpauer, 1876
- *Aglaophenia (Macrorhynchia) philippina* Kirchenpauer, 1872
- *Aglaophenia (Macrorhynchia) urens* Kirchenpauer, 1872
- *Lytocarpus crosslandi* Ritchie, 1907
- *Lytocarpus philippinus* (Kirchenpauer, 1872)
- *Lytocarpus phillippinus* (Kirchenpauer, 1872)

## Range

Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean Sea, North Atlantic Ocean

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/hydrozoans/white-stinger)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*