A small flatfish with the front dorsal rays drawn out into long free filaments.
A flatfish to about 20 cm, pale sandy brown with faint darker mottling, lying with both eyes on the right side. The character that names it is the front of the dorsal fin: the first several rays are long, free of the fin membrane and drawn out into filaments, and a settled fish raises them clear of the sand and lets them drift. They are the only part of the animal that is easy to see. The body itself is thin, low and the colour of the sediment it is on.
It lies on fine sand and silt, more often below about 10 m than above it, and it holds still. The filaments move with the water, and the usual way a fish is found is by noticing that movement over otherwise flat ground. Disturbed, it swims a short distance in the flatfish manner, close to the bottom, and settles again with a shrug that puts sediment back over the edges of the body. Recorded across the Indo-West Pacific, and taken by trawlers well below diving depth.
The samarid flatfishes are a small family and are separated from the soles and the flounders on the fin arrangement rather than on colour. Below family level a photograph rarely settles anything, but the free anterior rays are enough to place an animal in this genus on the bottom.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
