A pale goatfish with a black stripe from the snout through the eye and a black saddle at the tail base, up to 28 cm (11 in). It works sand and rubble patches next to the reef, snout down, with two barbels probing ahead of it.
Those barbels are chemical sensors on stalks. The fish drives them into sediment to taste for buried worms, crustaceans and small fish before committing to a dig, then folds them into a groove under the jaw when it moves on. Wrasses and small groupers follow a working goatfish to take whatever bolts out.
The name is a memorial. Peter Forsskal catalogued this sea in the 1760s on the Danish expedition to Arabia and died of plague in 🇾🇪 Yemen at thirty-one; his descriptions, published after his death, still carry his authority on a large share of the fish in this catalogue. He described this goatfish under a name that later proved unavailable, and the species was renamed after him instead.
It is also one of the more recent Lessepsian migrants: it reached the eastern Mediterranean in 2013 and has been spreading west since.
The genus. Parupeneus Bleeker 1863 - para- (near). ETYFish
The species. Parupeneus forsskali (Fourmanoir & Guézé 1976) - Honours Swedish explorer and naturalist Peter Forsskål. ETYFish
- pale body with a black stripe from the snout through the eye to below the dorsal fin
- black saddle on the tail stalk with a yellow patch in front of it
- pair of long barbels under the chin, folded away when not digging
- length up to 28 cm
Why it's threatened
Fishing pressure is a potential major threat to this species, but global-level declines are not known to have occurred at this time.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
