Really Weird Fishes: The Frogfish

Frogfish are among the fishes with the most strange & weird appearances. Blobs of fish, reminiscent of an algae-covered rock or an unsightly sponge, they lie in wait for prey fish to swim by. If you to spot one in person during a dive – and that takes good eyes, and some luck, then you can occasionally observe how they use their lure – a dorsal fin spine transformed by evolution to fulfill this function in hunting – to convince small fish that it’s a worm. Should the small fish try to go for the worm, the frogfish devours it.

The frogfish you’ll see belong to the order Antennariidae. Fishbase lists 32 species in 6 genera. The Antennariidae are part of the order of the Lophiiformes, which also include many deep sea anglerfishes.

Over the years, I have photographed and filmed quite a few frogfishes. Video number one has spectacular footage of a frogfish dining on a shrimp not much smaller than itself:

Many of the relatives of the shallow water frogfish are living in the deep sea. One can almost think of the shallow water frogfish as odd-fish-out of this larger group of mainly deep sea specialists. The deep sea anglerfishes have developed some unique mating strategies to be able to find a mate in this vast, sparsely populated habitat. How that evolved is still subject to ongoing research, I explain some of it here:

 

More frogfish from my adopted home, Dauin on Negros Island in the Philippines:. Dauin is one of the spots where you still have to look hard for frogfish, but the chances of spotting one are better than in many other scuba diving destinations. They are among the charismatic “muck diving” fauna:

This was a really rare find – a hairy frogfish. The hair mimic filamentous algae, common in the “muck” habitats. The completely unrelated Ambon scorpionfish uses a similar tactic. Convergent evolution!

And, one of my most creative frogfish images: will Doug kissing it turn the fish into a princess fish?

Best Fishes,

Klaus