A stocky green wrasse with a purple-red throat, endemic to this sea and the 🌊 Gulf of Aden. It is one of the fish that makes a 🌊 Red Sea reef look like a 🌊 Red Sea reef, and almost nobody outside the region has heard of it.
It hunts across rubble and coral for crabs, snails and small fish, using the heavy jaws and crushing throat plates the genus is built around. Where a broomtail wrasse turns stones, this one works the gaps between them.
Males hold territories over several females and display with the throat, which flushes deep red-purple when another male comes close. Females are mottled brown and easy to mistake for a different species entirely.
Twenty-five centimeters (10 in). Its close relative the Red-breasted Wrasse shares the reef and the general shape; the throat color and the pale scale margins separate them, and both are worth learning as local fish rather than as generic wrasses.
- males dark green with a purple-red throat and fine pale scale margins
- females and young mottled brown with pale blotches
- steep forehead and thick lips
- length up to 25 cm
Why it's threatened
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
