A mottled Scorpaenopsis of rubble and reef edge, separated from its neighbours on head characters.
A Scorpaenopsis to about 19 cm, mottled in brown, red and cream with the arched back, heavy head spines and skin flaps common to the genus. Growths of algae and encrusting animals are often carried on the head and the fins, and a fish sitting still on rubble reads as part of the substrate. Colour ranges from grey through to strong red, and on an animal on red sponge the whole fish can match it.
The characters that separate it from the tasselled and raggy scorpionfishes on the same ground are on the head rather than on the body: the depth of the pit behind the eyes, the length and arrangement of the head spines, and the pattern on the inner face of the pectoral fin. None of these is easy in a photograph taken from above, and a large part of the scorpionfish record from muck sites stays at Scorpaenopsis sp. for that reason.
It sits on rubble, dead coral and the broken ground at the foot of reef rather than out on open sand, and it does not move away from an approaching diver. Feeding is by ambush at very short range. Recorded through the western Pacific and into the Indian Ocean, from a few metres down.
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.
