The large scorpionfish of reef edges, and the one most often sat on by accident.
The largest of the common scorpionfish here, to about 36 cm, with a long tapering snout, a fringe of skin tassels under the jaw and around the eyes, and a body coloured to match whatever it is lying on — mottled red on sponge, grey-green on rock, sandy on rubble. The head profile is longer and less blunt than the devil scorpionfish, and there is no pronounced hump on the back.
Lies motionless on hard substrate through the day, usually against a vertical or sloping surface where it is broken up by texture rather than by colour, and hunts by ambush at dusk and after dark, taking small fish with a strike that empties the mouth cavity in a few milliseconds. It moults its outer skin layer periodically, which sheds attached algae and keeps the camouflage current. Recorded from the shallows to about 40 m. It will not move for a diver at any distance, so the fish that gets touched is the one that was never seen.
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.
