Odd Frogfish of Lembeh

When our friends John and Donna Todt were with us on their last visit, their presence jogged my memory in regards to these little froggies. I was with them on an eventful night dive at TK3 and down at ~14 meters we found three little frogfish in one group: a pregnant female and two suitors. One was of solid colour, but the other two, pictured here, showed more markings, being out in the open, more-or-less. On these three one can see the pale-edged spot at the base of the dorsal fin, which would identify them as A. mummifer, or spotfin frogfish. I hope that I’m right and the mystery has been solved. They often get confused with the next species I’ll approach.

The above pictures are of one of the usual suspects, the freckled frogfish a.k.a. the scarlet frogfish, or in the language of the Catholic Church, Antennarius coccineus. We find them often, mostly by night. They can be quite shy and hard to photograph. You’ll see that they have a short illicium (“fishing pole”) with a small white pom-pom esca (“lure”). They can be a range of colours, but are most often seen showing dull, often grey, colouration. Telling them apart from the Antennarius mummifer, also known as the spotfin frogfish can be a challenge, but the spotfin should have a dark, pale-edged spot at the base of the dorsal fin. It should also have a longer illicium, tipped with a cluster of filaments, but in my experience, the esca on the A. mummifer is difficult to see clearly. The orange and black pair below were in less than two meters of water on our House Reef for a few months, directly off our Dive Centre steps!.

The right two pictures are of what we call an ocellated frogfish and to my knowledge it has yet to be officially described. They are always small; the largest specimen I ever encountered was at Jahir and measured an approximate whopping 1.5 inches! They are usually black, but we have seen a few in shades of brown, like one of the pair in the middle shot. Their giveaway is the orange-ringed spot on the dorsal fin. They sometimes have two of these spots, but most often only one, with the orange ranging from subtle to flaming. We see them every two months or so, which leads me to believe that they are not rare, just very good at hiding, as they are almost never spotted out in plain sight.