The largest puffer in the region, and the juvenile looks like a different animal.
To about 120 cm, white to pale grey covered evenly in small black dots over the body and fins. Juveniles are yellow-orange with black stripes and blotches and live in shallow seagrass and rubble, and are so different that they are frequently reported as a separate species. The change begins at around 20 cm.
It feeds on hard-shelled prey — corals, molluscs, crustaceans, urchins — using fused beak-like teeth. Adults range over sand and reef and move slowly, and a large individual is one of the few fish here that a diver can swim alongside. As with other puffers the flesh and organs carry tetrodotoxin. Recorded from about 3 to 50 m.
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.