Delivers up to about 45 volts, hunts at night in open water, and will approach a diver's light.
To about 1.4 m, dark grey-brown, soft-bodied and rounded, with a thick tail and two dorsal fins. It has no barb and no thorns, and it looks like something that could not defend itself.
It delivers a shock of up to about 45 volts from paired organs behind the eyes, which it uses to stun prey and in defence. It hunts at night in open water as well as on the bottom and will approach a diver’s light. It is one of very few animals on this site that is capable of an unprovoked and genuinely startling interaction, and the sensible response is to give it room rather than to photograph it at arm’s length.
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.