The Red Sea has around 1,200 fish species and a couple of hundred corals, and about fifteen of them account for almost everything you will notice. Here is how to recognise them at speed, in the water, without a book — and, more usefully, the handful of things that will hurt you if you touch them. Last reviewed 25 July 2026.
On any reef, on any day, in the first ten minutes.
Clouds of small orange-pink fish hanging above the coral, all facing into the current
Everywhere, in enormous numbers, just above the reef
The orange ones are female and the larger purple-tinged ones male. They change sex — the dominant female becomes male when the male dies.
Silvery-yellow with five bold black bars, in busy shoals
Shallow water, often around jetties and boats
Big, blunt-headed, blue-green or rainbow, with a visible beak
Grazing on hard coral — you can hear them crunching it
That crunching produces sand. A large parrotfish makes hundreds of kilos of it a year, which is most of what you are lying on.
Flat, disc-shaped, boldly patterned, usually in pairs
Over hard coral, picking at polyps
Often mate for life, which is why you almost always see two.
Orange with white bars, never far from an anemone
Inside anemones on the reef top
The Red Sea has its own species — the two-band anemonefish. It will square up to you, and it is 8cm long.
Oval, often blue or brown, with a scalpel-sharp spine at the tail base
Grazing algae in the shallows, often in loose groups
Present on most reefs but takes a moment to notice.
Very large, green-blue, with a bulging forehead and thick lips
Drop-offs and deeper reef, often curious about divers
Endangered and long-lived. Some individuals on well-known sites are decades old and recognised by name locally.
A head protruding from a hole, mouth opening and closing
Crevices and overhangs, all depths
The mouth movement is breathing, not aggression. They bite hands put into holes, and that is essentially the only way people get bitten.
Sandy-yellow with electric blue spots, tucked under coral or on sand
Sandy patches and under overhangs
Has a venomous barb and no interest in using it. Do not corner one against a coral head.
Tall, flat, silver, drifting slowly in small groups
Around wrecks and drop-offs, mid-water
A flattened, mottled fish lying motionless on sand, with beautiful lacy eyes
On sand and rubble, superbly camouflaged
Harmless, and one of the great "how did I not see that" moments.
Broad smooth shell, blunt beak, unhurried
Seagrass bays — Abu Dabbab and Marsa Mubarak most reliably
Give it room to surface. A turtle prevented from breathing is a turtle in trouble.
A wavy-lipped shell set into the coral, iridescent blue-green inside
Embedded in reef tops
Seasonal, site-specific and never guaranteed. Anyone promising you these is selling something.
Large grey-brown, blunt-snouted, grazing head-down in seagrass
Abu Dabbab and a handful of other southern bays
Individually known and heavily disturbed by crowding. Stay behind, keep well back, and let it feed.
Slim, long-beaked, and they genuinely do spin clear of the water
Shaab El Erg and Samadai, resting in sheltered lagoons by day
The lagoons are where they sleep. Swimming at a resting pod is disturbance, whatever the boat calls it.
Stocky, with distinctive rounded white-tipped fins, moving slowly and confidently
Elphinstone and the offshore reefs, mainly autumn
Curious and will approach. Follow the briefing exactly — Egyptian operators run specific protocols and they exist for good reasons.
Unmistakable head, usually seen in schools, usually deep
Daedalus and the Brothers, mainly summer, early morning
A tail as long as the body
Little Brother’s plateau, where they come to be cleaned
Enormous, spotted, slow, harmless
Anywhere, rarely, mostly spring
Do not touch, do not ride, do not block its path. Every year someone does.
Almost every marine injury on this coast happens to someone who did not recognise what they were touching or standing on. Nothing here is aggressive except one fish, and nearly all of it is avoided by the same rule: keep your hands and feet off the reef.
This is not medical advice and deliberately stops short of treatment. Emergency numbers, the coast’s recompression chambers and the diving hotline are on our emergency contacts page.
Where to see them
Turtles and dugongs from the beach at Abu Dabbab, the big pelagics at Elphinstone and the offshore reefs. The full list of snorkelling sites and dive sites says what each one actually holds.