A broad-headed fish that sits in a hole, a shell or a piece of debris with only the face showing, and calls audibly through the water.
To about 33 cm. Squat and broad with a flattened head fringed with barbels and a huge mouth, brown to grey-brown marbled and mottled with white. The pectoral fins are crossed by light bars made of rows of round pale spots, and the mouth lining is unpigmented.
Those pectoral spot-rows separate it from the two other Atlantic toadfish.
Half a metre to five metres in seagrass, rocky cuts and empty conch shells in bays and lagoons. The behaviour worth knowing is the sound. A nesting male produces a boatwhistle call, a low grunting hoot that is audible to a diver, to advertise against rival males and attract females. Spawning is in February and March on the west coast of Florida.
Neither the opercular nor the dorsal gland is venomous. Ciguatera is reported.
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.