Skin like felt, no scales, and it sits among rubble looking like a lump of sponge.
A small, deep-bodied fish to about 10 cm covered not in scales but in dense minute papillae, which give the skin a matt, felted texture and the family its name. Colour is brown, red or cream in irregular blotches, the dorsal fin runs almost the whole length of the back, and the outline is broken by small flaps. Sitting still among rubble it reads as a torn piece of sponge, and that is what most divers swim past.
Ploactid velvetfish are poorly known, patchily recorded and easily confused with each other; identification to species in the field is often not possible, and many Indonesian records sit at genus. It is a bottom-sitting ambush feeder, active at night, taking small crustaceans. Recorded from about 3 to 30 m on silty rubble. Finding one is almost entirely a matter of a guide who has learned the search image, and it is one of the animals that separates an experienced muck guide from a good one.
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.
