Species of Scorpion fish

[Puffer Fish]

After never seeing a spotted scorpion fish up here in the northern gulf....two weekends in a row, have found one. This one was at the liberty ship off of Destin Florida. Depth was around 90 ft (so much for the fish ID book)...



The next dive was inshore, where the normal ones we see are:

 

[billmackbarnes]

I love the purple scorpion fish!

I spent an hour photographing two huge lancer dragonettes only to learn that they were actually Juvy scorpionfish. They were still neat. I was taking pictures of one about 2 inches long when his great grand dad came over and sat down beside my knee to get his picture taken. This guy was a foot long and really wanted to get to know me.

I found a peppermint shrimp I wanted to photograph, but I think he was cleaning a spotted moray, because everytime I went to tease out the shrimp, the moray came out with his mouth WIDE open. Finallly get the shrimp out and my camera battery is DEAD! @#%^@#^

Then I started getting attacked by Grey Angelfish and I started getting spooked! Found out later they were just trying to clean me and my camera.

You just never know at Blue Heron!

Bill

 

[scubadiveilat]

Between different countries the colors are changing. Perhaps because of the camouflage to the environment.

The scientific name is Scorpaenopsis barbata (Rüppell, 1838) the common name is Bearded scorpion fish

A beautiful species of the Scorpaenopsis family.

 

[Puffer Fish]

scubadiveilat, interesting take on that fish. Here it is called Scorpaena plumieri (Bloch, 1789). Looking at the images, would be willing to bet they are the same fish. Fish identification has come a long way in the last 100 years (I hope).

But even the family name is different... Scorpaeridae, how odd.