A round golden pelagic juvenile with enormous eyes and spines that have not yet stood up.
A small, almost spherical fish with very large eyes, a short beak of fused teeth, clear rounded fins and a body that at this stage runs yellow, gold or pale brown with dark blotches and a scatter of dark spots. The spines that give the family its name are present but short, and they lie flat against the body rather than standing out, so the outline is smooth. Young animals are semi-transparent over the belly and the gut shows through.
Porcupinefishes spend an unusually long time in open water before settling — weeks to months, in some species — so pelagic juveniles are met well away from any reef and are a regular blackwater subject. They drift and paddle with the pectoral fins rather than swimming hard, and they inflate when handled by a current or crowded by a light, which is worth avoiding for the animal’s sake rather than the photograph’s. The settled adults, which have their own entries, are far larger and shelter under ledges through the day.
Records are kept at the family. The pelagic juveniles of Diodon, Chilomycterus and their relatives are similar in outline at this size and are separated on spine counts and fin ray counts, neither of which a photograph of a drifting animal will normally give.
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.
