A small brown puffer marked with fine pale lines that curl and double back over the flank.
A sharpnose puffer to about 12 cm, brown over the back and paler below, the flank covered in fine pale lines and spots that curve and double back in the pattern the common name describes. Further lines radiate from the eye. The body is compressed from side to side and the snout is pointed, as in the rest of the genus.
It is a soft-bottom fish rather than a reef one, common over silty sand, rubble and weed on sheltered inshore ground, singly or in pairs, hovering a little above the bottom and picking at it. Valentin’s sharpnose puffer uses the same sites and is separated at any distance by its four dark saddles. Recorded from about 2 to 25 m.
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.