FishCommonVisible while snorkeling

Suez fusilier

Caesio suevica

A silver-blue flash with black-and-white tail tips: it streaks past the reef wall in schools, and only the Red Sea has it.

Photo: iNaturalist – (c) Francois Libert, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA)

The Suez fusilier (Caesio suevica) is endemic to the Red Sea – it swims in no other sea on Earth. Its streamlined, torpedo-shaped body is silvery blue with a yellowish tint towards the back, and its surest field mark is the deeply forked tail: both lobes are tipped black with a white edge. Fusiliers are close relatives of the snappers, but they switched to a completely different lifestyle, trading the reef itself for the open water column.

Speed and the school are its element: by day it darts along the reef walls in formations from a dozen to several hundred fish, snatching tiny planktonic animals from the water with its small, protrusible mouth. The school is in constant motion – opening up, packing tight, switching direction in a single flash, painting silvery light-play into the blue. At dusk the fusiliers retreat into reef crevices, and while resting their colour even shifts towards red.

Around Hurghada you will meet them most often at current-exposed reef edges and walls: schools regularly streak past you on the blue-water side of Carless Reef and Umm Gamar, and they are common along the Giftun walls and on drift dives. Snorkelers can see them too when a school sweeps over the shallow reef edge – the flickering black-and-white tail tips tell you instantly that the Red Sea's very own fusilier has just rushed by.

Did you know?

The Suez fusilier changes outfit for the night: its daytime silver-blue shifts to reddish while resting, because red is practically invisible at depth and after dark – letting it sleep safely in the reef's crevices.

Where can you meet it?

Most spectacular on the current-swept walls: schools regularly sweep past on the blue-water side of Carless Reef and Umm Gamar and along the reef edges of the Giftun Islands.

Frequently asked questions

No, it is a completely harmless plankton eater. The only "danger" from the schools is forgetting to breathe when a few hundred silver fish change direction around you at once.

Yes – the schools often sweep over the shallow reef edges too, especially where a little current keeps the water moving. The forked tail with black-and-white tips is clearly visible from the surface.

Yes – the Suez fusilier is endemic to the Red Sea. When a school streaks past you at Hurghada, you are watching a spectacle no other sea in the world can offer.