Squat, granular and usually wedged into a hole with only the face showing.
A small, stocky frogfish to about 9 cm with skin covered in close-set granular spinules that give it a texture closer to coarse sandpaper than to the warty or hairy species. Colour is typically brown, olive or grey with darker bands radiating from the eye and across the tail base, and pale specimens show a scatter of small dark spots. The illicium is very short and the esca is a simple swelling.
It is a rubble animal rather than a sand one, and it does not sit in the open. Most records are of a fish wedged into a hole in dead coral, under a plate or inside a crevice with only the front of the head visible, which is why an unremarkable and reasonably common species is one of the harder frogfish to be shown. Shallow — usually inside 20 m and often in the first few metres. Its habit of sitting in cover means it is frequently found by a guide checking the same three holes on every dive, which is as good a description of muck diving as any.
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.