The aims of the present study were to investigate the response of the digestive enzyme activities to abrupt salinity change in the pufferfish Takifugu ocellatus, and to investigate the optimal water salinity for a more efficient digestibility and nutrient absorption, which might result in an improvement of growth potential of the fish. The experiment designed three salinity treatments (8‰, 18‰ and 35‰) and freshwater control (0), with three replicates each. After acclimatization, 360 fish were randomly allotted to four groups of 0, 8‰, 18‰ and 35‰ water salinity with 30 fish per tank. The experiment lasted for 15 days and samplings were carried out on day 1, 4, 7 and 15. Results showed that the increased salinity significantly affected the activities of α-amylase, pepsin and trypsin (P<0.05). The activity of α-amylase was higher at 18‰ compared with that at 35‰ and 8‰ during the posterior phase of experiment (P<0.05). The activity of pepsin was significantly different between 8‰ and 18‰ (P<0.05) in most of the sampling days. The activity of trypsin was higher at 8‰ compared with that at 35‰ and 18‰ (P<0.05). It was suggested that the pufferfish reared at salinity 8‰~18‰ presented a higher activities of digestive enzyme.