Aug 24, 2023 · By Erik Olsen

The Garibaldi Is California’s Bright Orange, Bad-Tempered State Fish

California’s state marine fish is impossible to miss, fiercely territorial and oddly curious about divers. Here’s why garibaldi are orange, how the males build nests and where to see one.

Updated Oct 12, 2026

---

If you’ve ever looked at an underwater photo of the Southern California coast, there’s a good chance it had a garibaldi in it. You can’t miss them. They’re bright orange, about the size of your hand, and they hang around the kelp and rocks like they own the place, which, as far as they’re concerned, they do.

The garibaldi is a kind of damselfish, and it’s California’s official state marine fish. It’s also illegal to take one. The name probably comes from Giuseppe Garibaldi, the 19th-century Italian revolutionary whose soldiers wore red shirts, or from the “garibaldi,” a red blouse that was fashionable for women in the 1890s.

That orange comes from carotenoids, the same pigments that make carrots orange. Garibaldi eat a lot of small crustaceans, like crabs and shrimp, which are loaded with them, and the pigment ends up in their skin. Carotenoids are also antioxidants, so the fish may get a bit of cell protection along with the paint job.

The color isn’t just for looks. Garibaldi are fiercely territorial, especially the males, and that blazing orange is a signal to rivals to back off and to females that this is a healthy fish worth considering. It basically says, “I’m strong, I’m healthy, and this is my rock.”

California Garibaldi

They live from around Monterey Bay south into Baja California, but the easiest place to see them is Catalina Island, about 20 miles off Long Beach. Casino Point in Avalon is a popular dive and snorkel spot, and the garibaldi there are practically part of the scenery.

The males are homebuilders. During breeding season, a male clears a patch of rock and grows a nest of red algae on it, trimming and tending it like a lawn. When a female swims by, he shows it off, circling and dancing around the nest to convince her it’s a good place to lay her eggs.

https://youtube.com/shorts/JgFHVPLQN00?feature=share

A California Garibaldi protecting its nest.

Once the eggs are laid, the female leaves, and the male takes over. He guards the eggs and fans them with his pectoral fins to keep fresh, oxygenated water moving over them. He’ll charge other fish that come too close, and he’ll charge divers too.

Oddly, that same aggressive fish is often curious about people. Garibaldi will swim right up to a diver’s mask to check them out, which, along with that color, makes them a favorite of underwater photographers.

“The only thing that seems to affect their fearless behavior is the color of the animal that’s approaching them,” said Dr. Kiersten Darrow, research curator at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. “They will attack everybody else, but if they see that it’s a garibaldi fish of a certain type then they will back away.”

Female California Garibaldi

They make noise, too. Divers sometimes hear a garibaldi thumping, a sound that seems to be part of defending its territory, although nobody is entirely sure what it means.

Being this easy to spot and this easy to catch once made garibaldi a target, and overfishing for the aquarium trade led to the protections they have today. They’re slow growers. A garibaldi takes about six years to mature and can live more than 20 years, so a fish guarding a nest off Catalina might easily be older than some of the kids snorkeling over it.

Catalina Island and Casino Point (Erik Olsen)

I’ve dived with garibaldi at Casino Point, and if you get the chance, you should too. Put your face in the water off Catalina, and odds are a garibaldi will come over to see who you are.