Similar to the hairy frogfish but with shorter appendages and a distinct lure. Open sand.
To about 20 cm. The esca is a large oval pom-pom of many slender filaments — a woolly ball rather than the worms of the hairy frogfish, and this is the character that separates the two, which otherwise share the stripes and the shaggy coat. The rod is about equal to the second dorsal spine and is banded. The three dorsal spines are well separated from each other and from the fin; the second is nearly straight and mobile, the third bent backward. The body is globulous and extensible, the skin carrying small spinules and hair-like appendages. Ground colour is light tan to yellow or brownish-orange with roughly parallel dark streaks, some radiating from the eye, and the belly unstriped. Ignore any figure giving this species 45 cm; that number appears in one database alongside its own contradictory 20 cm and belongs to the giant frogfish.
Shallow rocky and coral reef through to deep, offshore muddy bottoms — sandy areas with algae, debris and small stones, and often among leaf litter — from the shallows to about 90 m, averaging deeper than most of the family. It is reported to stay unusually still and not to work its lure much, and to carry a small white flap of skin above the mouth as an additional enticement, though that detail comes from a single source. Indo-West Pacific from East Africa to the Moluccas, north to Taiwan and south to northern Australia, and notably absent from oceanic islands.
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.