The largest of the group, usually settled on a sponge and often in one place for weeks.
The largest frogfish in the Indo-Pacific, recorded to 45 cm though a large animal on a dive is nearer 30. The characters are structural rather than chromatic. The esca is a small tuft of flattened appendages, bushy at the base and drawn out into fine long filaments, and it is small relative to the rod; it does not imitate a fish. The bony part of the rod is roughly equal in length to the second dorsal spine — a short rod, against the near-double length of the painted and warty frogfish. Most usefully, the second and third dorsal spines are thick and bulb-like, sometimes carrying wart-like swellings, with a thick spinulose membrane behind the second running to the base of the third. The skin bears lightly pigmented spots, patches and scabs and a few wart-like protuberances. It comes in yellow, orange, green, brown, black, grey, pink and red, and changes gradually to match wherever it is sitting.
Lagoon and seaward reefs and jetty pilings from the shallows to about 70 m, though usually above 20, and it is often found perched high on a large sponge in current. Juveniles are routinely confused with painted and warty frogfish; the bulbous dorsal spines, the short rod and the absence of the three light-edged caudal spots of the painted frogfish are what to check. Beware the species pages that give this animal a fish-imitating esca and a rod twice the length of the second spine — that is boilerplate copied across the family and it is wrong here.
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.