Hawkfish & Scorpionfish

Group 9: Odd shaped bottom dwellers

Hawkfish & Scorpionfish

Group 9 - Odd shaped bottom dwellers : This category of fish is made up of families and species that didn’t quite fit anywhere else due to their unique body shapes.

Longnose Hawkfish (Oxycirrhites typus)

The longnose hawkfish differs from all the other hawkfish species in its elongated snout, the length of the snout fitting roughly twice into the overall length of the head. The canine teeth in the jaws are of uniform size and are only slightly larger than the inner band of villiform teeth.

Sanguine Frogfish (Antennarius sanguineus)

Also known as the Bloody Frogfish. This is one of the more exotic and most unusual fishes in the world and the most common Frogfish in the Tropical Eastern Pacific Ocean. The Sanguine Frogfish has a globose, slightly compressed body with a large oblique mouth featuring numerous small villiform teeth. They are highly variable in color, being found in various shades of yellowish brown to red with brown spotting and mottling. They have conspicuous brown spots on their belly. They have small gill openings found behind and below the pectoral fin base. Their first dorsal spine (the “illicium”) is large and free, forming a movable “fishing rod” that is approximately equal in length to the second dorsal spine.

Calico Lizardfish (Synodus lacertinus)

The Sauro lizardfish is native to the areas of eastern Pacific Ocean. This species commonly occurs on sandy bottoms or sand patches that are around rocky reefs or boulder and gravel strewn slopes. The average length of this species as an unsexed male is about 15 centimeters or about 5.9 inches. The Sauro lizardfish is recorded to live solitarily and not within a group. It also is known to be active at night while only showing eyes and mouth during the day by hiding in the sand. As prey swim by, it pounces from its spot in the sand.

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1. Disks and Ovals / Colorful

The first category of disk and oval shaped fish are very important to learn. They are colorful, large and very obvious and the three main families that make up the group can be found on almost every dive.

3. Sloping Head / Tapered Body

This third group of “fish-like” fish, are very important to learn. The are common on most dives and are also highly sought after as food fish. It is especially important to monitor these fish to provide data for fisheries management. Snappers can be very difficult to tell apart from the similarly shaped grunts. One helpful hint is to look at their tails. Snappers tend to have straight, flat tails. They are also known for their habit of snapping their mouth open and shut when caught on hook and line. They have very sharp canine teeth that can provide a nasty bite to the unsuspecting angler. Look closely on your next dive and you may see the small teeth protruding from the side of the mouth. Grunts on the other hand, have slightly notched tails. They get their name from the grunting sounds they emit when threatened. These sounds are created by rubbing together bony teeth plates located in the back of the throat. Since the teeth are in the throat, a diver will never see protruding teeth on a grunt, only big blubbery fish lips.

4. Small Ovals / Damselfish

While divers tend to first notice the larger, more obvious fish on a dive, after a short while the challenge to find new species leads them to change their search image to look for smaller, previously unnoticed fish. Generally, the first new species a diver will encounter will belong to the small oval shaped group. This group is broken into the damselfish and their close cousins the chromis. Damsels are like the surgeonfish in that they eat algae. They do not roam around grazing, but rather tend to small algae gardens like a farmer. These areas are guarded fiercely as the algae farm is the damsels food source. For that reason you can think of the damselfish as not just territorial, but Dam- selfish with its territory. Many damselfish have distinctly different colors as juveniles, often being much brighter and more colorful when they are young and becoming drab with age. (much like us humans!) For this reason, the juveniles have been heavily collected for the aquarium trade and are under heavy fishing pressure. As part of the REEF Fish Survey Project, divers are asked to monitor the juveniles and adults separately in two of the damselfish species – the Cortez damselfish and the giant damselfish.

5. Heavy Body / Large Lips

Heavy bodied, large lipped fish belong to the seabass family. We tend to refer to the larger seabasses as groupers and the smaller seabasses as bass or basslets. These fish are extremely important food fish and are under increasing threats from heavy fishing pressures. Monitoring these fish can help provide valuable data to aid in their protection. Most seabasses are hermaphrodites, meaning the same fish will be both a male and a female during its lifetime. The groupers are all born female and later change sex to become male. Most large groupers also congregate each year to spawn at a specific location, making them easy targets for emerging positioning and fishing technology.

6. Swim with Pectorals / Obvious Scales

The fish in this group all use their pectoral fins to swim with rather than the traditional tail swimming of most other fish. The scales are also quite large and obvious. These fish can also be hermaphrodites, like the groupers, with some fish changing sex and others staying the same. Intermediate and adult fish often have very different appearances compared to the always-male terminal phase. This means learning two colors to be able to ID the same species of fish. Most of the pictures shown in this curriculum are terminal phase males, unless noted.

8. Small, Elongated Bottom Dwellers

The small bottom dwelling fish often make up the most interesting fish to watch during your dive. Their approachable nature and interesting behaviors make them great fishwatching finds. Blennies tend to be slightly larger than gobies, but are most easily recognized by their curved body posture and expressive faces. Gobies, though similar in their habitat requirements, tend to sit flat and straight on the bottom. The jawfishes actually live in a burrow in the sand that they excavate and maintain.

11. Eels

Though looking like snakes, eels are fish. There are several different types of eels, and we will look at two – garden eels that live in burrows in the sand and moray eels. Moray eels have a bad reputation mainly due to the constant opening and closing of their sharp toothed mouths. However, this is not a threat to divers, as this action pumps water through their gills. Most eels are actually very shy.