Leaf-mimicking waspfish told from the cockatoo by its pale head. Venomous dorsal spines.
A compressed, leaf-shaped waspfish to about 15 cm with the same profile as the cockatoo waspfish Ablabys taenianotus — a nearly vertical snout and a tall unnotched dorsal fin rising from above the front of the eye and running unbroken to the tail. The separation is colour rather than shape: this species usually shows a distinctly pale, whitish head and snout set against a much darker brown or maroon body, where A. taenianotus is more evenly mottled and often carries a pale stripe over the forehead rather than a pale whole face. Both are variable and the mark is not infallible, so a record made without a clear view of the head is better left at genus. Dorsal spine count is high in both, around seventeen or eighteen, against twelve in the true scorpionfishes.
Mimics a dead leaf, rocking with the surge and drifting rather than swimming, and settles wherever it comes to rest. Solitary or in pairs, feeding on small crustaceans taken with a short lunge. It relies on not being noticed and will hold position while a diver works around it, which makes it straightforward to photograph and easy to put a hand on by accident.
Recorded from a few metres to about 25 m on sand, rubble, weed and silty inshore bottoms. It is less often reported than A. taenianotus across the region, though how much of that is genuine scarcity and how much is the two being logged as one species is not clear.
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.
