A small banded waspfish of east coast estuaries, sitting on sand, weed or rubble in very shallow water.
To about 15 cm, banded in brown and cream, with a large head and a small body. It is a waspfish, and it lives in New South Wales estuaries on sand, weed and rubble, frequently in water shallow enough to stand up in.
The sting is out of all proportion to the size of the fish: intensely painful, and it is one of the commoner marine stings on that coast because the animal is where people wade rather than where they dive. Hot water, and medical attention if the pain does not settle or if the wound is deep. The fish does not move when approached and it is small enough to be easy to miss.
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.
