Saturday, December 23, 2006

Not such a looker

Here's the first of an array of upcoming ugly philippine fish. I found this little chap on a night dive off Cabilao. For some reason this particular dive turned up a lot of tiny ambush predators. I'm fairly sure this is a reef stonefish but at this size its hard to be confident on species as these chaps are all similar and all variable. I also saw tiny scorpionfish and devilwalkers amongst other things.

stonfeeish

To be fair this little chap is too little and cute amongst these pebbles to be truly ugly (there is worse coming) but you'd never call him a looker.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sure not even his mother thought(?) him pretty, but he sure is beautiful as camouflaged for his own survival. Great, clear photo, but you almost need a overlay diagram to figure out the what part is where.

Pam in Tucson said...

Great photo - one has to look so carefully to make it out. I don't know your email address, so I'm taking the opportunity here to wish you Happy Holidays. I hope these days are joyous for you.

tai haku said...

Thanks Carl and Pam. The important part to make out is that big venomous spike on his back - seeing all these chaps crawling round makes one very wary of settling on the sand.

Best (but belated) wishes one and all.