The largest frogfish in the region, with three dark ringed spots on the body. On soft bottoms rather than on sponge.
To about 40 cm, which makes it the largest frogfish in the western Atlantic. Globular and slightly compressed with a huge upward-facing mouth. Orange to mottled yellow-brown with numerous small dark spots on the lower head and body. The identification is three conspicuous eyespots, each ringed in a paler colour, in fixed positions: one on the lower middle of the soft dorsal fin, one on the middle of the body, and one in the centre of the tail.
The longlure frogfish also has eyespots, but they are smaller and more numerous and its lure is very long with a three-lobed tip.
It is a sit-and-wait ambush predator, and unusually for a Caribbean frogfish it is as much a soft-bottom fish as a reef one, sitting on shell, mud and sand. It lives between 1 and about 150 m and is typically around 50, which is deeper than most frogfish divers meet.
The Florida record is good. There is only a single Bahamas record, so treat the species as genuinely rare there rather than as a fish to look for.
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.