Painted Frogfish

Blogged by Simon on November 27, 2009 6:22pm | Last updated by Simon on February 17, 2010 11:59pm | Category: Underwater Photography | Get a Print Get a Print |

Painted Frogfish (Antennarius Pictus)Talk about a lucky find – the Painted Frogfish (Antennarius pictus) appears to be as rare as it is weird. According to our divemaster Ben at Wakatobi, they haven’t seen any for months, so I was thrilled to get this little guy in front of my lens.

Frogfish, or Anglerfish as they are called in Australia, are unusual, benthic (bottom dwelling) fishes that prefer to ‘walk’ across the seafloor using their pectoral fins instead of swimming, which is hilarious to watch. The unusual facts don’t stop here: Frogfish are amongst the few fish species don’t have scales to protect them. Being bottom dwellers, they rely only on camouflage as a means of defense, blending seamlessly into the background (it does not stand out from it’s environment that ‘pink’ without the camera flash, so the image misleads a bit here).

They often dig themselves into the sand with only a tiny rod standing out visibly, which is protruding from their forehead. This rod is used as a lure to attract bait and is luminescent in some species (it glows in the dark) which comes in handy for a nocturnal predator that likes to just sit around and wait for prey.

It proved rather difficult to photograph the Frogfish, it was hiding inbetween coral overgrowth and not interesting in posing for us. Ben gently lifted up the coral with his poking stick, allowing me a quick 3 shots, one of which you’re looking at here.

Camera settings: 60mm macro lens, f/16, 1/60s, ISO 200. I used the “Neutral Density” filter in Color Efex Pro for Aperture to darken the corners of this image and the “Low Key” filter to darken and saturate at the same time. The second filter brings out the surface texture of the Frogfish which was lost under too much initial flash. I quite like the result of this one, giving it more natural looking color.

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