The small frogfish everyone here photographs, and it was misidentified for decades.
Known to guides and divers in North Sulawesi as the Lembeh frogfish. A small frogfish, mature at around 3 cm and rarely above 5, with a rounded body, smooth to finely spinulose skin, a short lure and a colour range from cream and yellow through orange to red-brown, usually with darker banding on the fins. It is the frogfish most often shown to divers in Lembeh and the one most often photographed here.
Its name is a recent correction. For decades the small frogfish of these slopes were reported as juvenile Abantennarius nummifer or as a “deepwater frogfish”, and a 2018 revision established that the animal is Nudiantennarius subteres, a species described in 1912 from the Philippines and then effectively lost. Older field guides, dive centre lists and photograph captions therefore carry the wrong name in large numbers, which is worth knowing when cross-checking any source on this species. Recorded from about 5 to 30 m on silt and rubble, often out on open sediment rather than tucked into cover, which is part of why it is seen so often.
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.
