Blackspotted puffer
Arothron nigropunctatus
Stellate Puffer
Arothron stellatus
About
The stellate puffer is the giant of the pufferfish family. It grows to about 120 cm, though most fish divers see are around 54 cm, and it lives between 3 and 58 m. Like other puffers it can swallow water or air and blow itself up into a ball, and its ovaries, skin and liver hold tetrodotoxin, a strong poison it picks up from the bacteria in its food. It is a daytime fish, mostly alone, and it holds a territory. It is listed as Least Concern.
Also known as: starry puffer, stellate puffer, blackspotted puffer, starry blowfish, starry toadfish, toby, starry pufferfish, staring blow fish, star puffer, star blaasop, starry toadfish, starry puffer, star puffer, starry puffer, globe-fish, starry pufferfish, starry toadfish, toado, black-lined pufferfish, diagonal-banded toadfish, diagonal-banded toado, stellate toado
- Length
- 54 cm · max 1.2 m
- Depth
- up to 58 m
How to tell it apart
Size and pattern together. This is a very large, heavy-bodied puffer, pale grey and peppered all over with round black spots, including on the fins, with bigger black blotches where the pectoral and dorsal fins meet the body. Watch the spot size: on a small fish the spots are large and few, and on a big adult they are small and dense. A striped, yellowish fish in shallow muddy water near shore is a juvenile of the same species.
Appearance
The body is oval and rounded, a little long, with no scales. Instead the skin is prickly, covered in tiny spines everywhere except the top of the snout, the fin bases and the sides of the tail base. There are no pelvic fins under the body and no lateral line, the sensory stripe most fish carry along the flank. The dorsal and anal fins are small and sit far back, close to the rounded tail. The head is large with a short snout, two pairs of nostrils, and a mouth with four strong teeth at the front. Adults are pale grey to white, thickly covered in black spots, with larger black blotches around the bases of the pectoral and dorsal fins. The belly is paler. Juveniles are yellowish with dark stripes.
Habitat
This puffer lives in warm water across the Indo-Pacific, from the Red Sea and Indian Ocean out to the islands of the central Pacific. It is not a common fish. Look for it on patch reefs and coral slopes next to sandy ground, in clear lagoons and on seaward reefs. Young fish stay inshore over mud and weedy bottoms, often in estuaries. Adults use deeper slopes and outer reefs, and they sometimes swim well above the bottom or just under the surface.
Did you know?
The pattern runs backwards as the fish grows. Small stellate puffers wear a few large spots, and the biggest adults are covered in fine dense speckles, so spot size shrinks as body size increases. Juveniles do not have spots at all but dark stripes, which break up into spots as they grow.
Log it in Into the Blue
Describe what you saw and we name it, then keep every species you find in your Oceandex.
