Sargassum Frogfish

The sargassum frogfish is a strange, lumpy little ambush hunter that grows to about 20 cm and lives its whole life tangled in floating seaweed. Its shape and colour make it almost impossible to spot until it moves.

Also known as: marbled angler, mouse fish, sargassum anglerfish, sargassum fish, sargassum anglerfish, sargassum fish, shaggy angler, marbled angler, mouse fish, sargassum frogfish, sargassumfish, sargassum-fish, sargassum frogfish, sargassum angler

Its weed-like skin flaps and constant grip on floating Sargassum are the giveaway - a fish this shapeless clinging to weed with hand-like fins is a sargassum frogfish, not a true anglerfish or other camouflaged reef fish.

The body is mottled yellow, green, and brown on a paler background, with dark streaks or bands on the fins, and it can shift from light to dark in moments. Skin flaps that look like bits of weed cover the body and fins. A slender growth above the mouth, tipped with a fleshy lump, acts as a fishing lure. The pectoral fins are stalked and used almost like hands to grip onto weed stems.

This fish lives at the surface among rafts of drifting Sargassum weed, in warm and mild seas worldwide, usually no deeper than about 2 m though it has been found down to 50 m. Storms sometimes wash it into shore and bay waters.

It is a solitary ambush predator that waits motionless in the weed, dangling its lure to draw in small fish and shrimp. When prey comes close, it snaps its mouth open many times its resting size and sucks the animal in, fast enough to swallow prey larger than itself.

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  Frogfish

  frogfish

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  Giant frogfish

  Antennarius commerson

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  Longlure Frogfish

  Antennarius multiocellatus

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  Painted frogfish

  Antennarius pictus

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  Peixe Pescador

  Antennarius pardalis

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  Splitlure Frogfish

  Antennarius scaber