Laterally flattened and rocking with the surge. Comes in several colour forms at the same site.
Small, to about 10 cm — the widely repeated 15 cm is not supported by the databases that hold the measurements. The body is extremely compressed side to side, the dorsal fin high and long-based with the third or fourth spine longest, and the skin carries prickly papillae instead of scales. There are only two indistinct preopercular spines and the suborbital ridge is smooth, and fine appendages form a beard around the mouth. Colour runs white, cream, pink, red, yellow, green, brown or nearly black, variously mottled, and it is individual rather than diagnostic — an animal can come out of a moult a different colour. Despite both being called leaf fish it is not closely related to the cockatoo waspfish: this is a scorpaenid, that is a tetrarogid, and the spine counts are nothing alike.
It sheds its skin, and this is the one species in the group for which that is well attested rather than inferred from aquaria — roughly twice a month, starting at the head, with feeding falling off beforehand and colour coming up stronger after. It pivots head-down and rocks from side to side in the surge, imitating a drifting leaf, then takes small crustaceans and fish larvae with a fast gape. For a photographer it is an unusually cooperative subject, holding position for long periods, but the sway is rhythmic and a slow shutter only works between beats. Recorded from 5 to 135 m, typically 5 to 20, and it has the widest range of any species here — East Africa to the Galápagos, Japan to Australia.
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.
