A small sand flathead, narrower in the head than the crocodilefish it is taken for.
A flathead to about 25 cm, the head flattened and spined, the body tapering, mottled in brown and cream with dark saddles across the back and bars on the tail. It is smaller and much narrower across the head than the crocodilefish, and it lacks that species’ heavy growth of skin flaps and tentacles, so a flathead on open sand at 20 cm is more often this genus than Cymbacephalus. Separating the Thysanophrys species from one another depends on head spine counts and is not reliable from a photograph.
The eye carries the family’s distinguishing structure, a branched flap of tissue hanging from the upper edge of the iris that shades the pupil and breaks up the round outline of the eye. On a lit fish it is the most photographed part of the animal. The fish itself lies flat on sand, often with a dusting of sediment across the back, and moves only when a diver comes within a metre or so.
It hunts small fish and crustaceans from that position, taking them upward with a short lunge. Recorded across the Indo-Pacific on sand and fine rubble from the shallows to about 50 m. On black sand it is close to invisible until it moves, and most animals are found by divers working slowly along a slope rather than by anyone looking for them.
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.
