Splitlure Frogfish

The splitlure frogfish is a rough-skinned, lumpy ambush hunter that sits still on the reef and dangles a built-in lure to draw fish within striking range.

It can be confused with other frogfish species, especially the striated frogfish, which it closely resembles and was once classed together with. The clearest mark is its rough, spiny skin texture, felt as bumpy rather than smooth when compared to smoother-skinned frogfish.

This fish has a round, slightly flattened body with eyes on the sides of its head and a huge, upward-facing mouth. Its pectoral fins work like little limbs, bending at an elbow-like joint. The skin is rough, covered in small forked spines, and coloured yellow, orange, green, brown, grey, or almost white, marked with irregular slim brown bars and spots and dark lines radiating from the eye.

It lives on reefs and sandy or muddy bottoms in the western Atlantic, from New Jersey and Bermuda south through the Caribbean to Brazil. Divers typically find it in shallow reef water, though it can also occur much deeper.

It waits motionless and uses a rod-like lure on its head, tipped with a worm-like appendage, to draw prey close before striking. It lays its eggs in a floating, jelly-like mass called a raft, where they stay until they hatch.

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  Frogfish

  frogfish

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  Longlure Frogfish

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  Painted frogfish

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  Sargassum Frogfish

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