A weed-fringed scorpionfish of rubble slopes, present in some seasons and absent in others.
To around 23 cm. The characters that separate it from Eschmeyer’s rhinopias are countable rather than chromatic: nine to twenty-four tentacles under the lower jaw against two, two to four below the eye against none, numerous distinct tentacles on the body, and the tentacles above the eye long and distinctly branched rather than short paddles. The spiny dorsal membrane is intermediate in fleshiness with a strongly notched margin, the penultimate dorsal spine is usually straight, and the caudal ray tips divide into four. The colour pattern, where it shows, is numerous circular dark-margined pale spots — a scattering of rings, against the maze of the lacy rhinopias and the plain field of Eschmeyer’s. One warning: how heavily tasselled an individual is depends on where it lives, densely so on algal reefs and much plainer on deep sponge bottoms, so appendage density alone is not a species character. That is precisely the mistake that produces most misidentifications between this species and Eschmeyer’s.
Recorded from about 10 m down to nearly 300, though everything below diving depth is trawl data. Rocky and coralline areas, macroalgae, sponge bottoms and current-swept channels. A nocturnal ambusher on small fish and invertebrates, walking on its pectoral and pelvic fins rather than swimming and swaying with the current. On rarity: there is no published abundance or seasonality data for any rhinopias. Every operator calls them rare and several advertise a season, but nothing in the literature supports a seasonal pattern, and the IUCN listing of least concern reflects an absence of assessed threat rather than abundance.
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.
