One of the small rubble scorpionfishes, red-brown and mottled, usually wedged under a stone.
A small scorpionfish to about 14 cm, red-brown to grey, marbled and barred, with a large head, well-developed head spines and short skin flaps above the eye and along the jaw. There is usually a dark blotch on the spinous part of the dorsal fin. It is one of a group of similar small Scorpaenodes on the same ground; the species are separated on spine counts and on the arrangement of the head ridges, which a photograph will not settle, so most records are best kept at the genus.
The habit is to wedge into a gap under rubble or dead coral, or into the base of a sponge, and stay there with the head showing. By day the fish is far back; after dark it comes out onto the rubble surface and sits in the open, and night dives account for most sightings. Feeding is on small crustaceans taken from close range.
It is shallow, mostly above about 20 m, and widely recorded through the Indo-Pacific. On a muck site the species turns up on the rubble margins rather than out on sand, and it is usually found while a diver is looking at something else on the same stone.
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.
