A southern Australian anglerfish covered in branched skin flaps, sitting on sponge and rock where it is very hard to separate from the ground.
To 23 cm. A short deep body with a large head, small protruding eyes and an upturned mouth, densely covered in long branched filaments that mimic red algae. That covering is the definitive feature. Reddish-brown with dark and light patterning and a pale underside, with a worm-like tip on a short lure.
A second Australian anglerfish of the same genus is separated on the lure: that one has a longer lure with paired worm-like appendages, this one a shorter lure with a single tapering appendage.
It is a sit-and-wait ambush predator on rocky reef covered in large algae, where the filaments make it close to invisible against red weed. It waves the worm-like lure. Its breeding is unusual for an anglerfish: the female attaches demersal eggs individually to rock by filaments and the male covers the cluster with his body and guards it until it hatches. It lives between about 2 and 60 m. It is fairly common and almost never spotted.
It is endemic to southern Australia, from eastern Victoria west to Hopetoun in Western Australia including northern Tasmania — a temperate fish, not a Great Barrier Reef one, and a classic target on Port Phillip Bay and Mornington Peninsula dives.
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.