Spotfin Lionfish (Pterois Antennata)

Tag: Spotfin Lionfish (Pterois Antennata)

Pterois antennata, the spotfin lionfish, banded lionfish, broadbarred lionfish, broadbarred firefish, raggedfinned firefish, raggedfinned scorpionfish or roughscaled lionfish, is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Scorpaenidae, the scorpionfishes and lionfishes. It is found in the tropical Indian and Western Pacific Oceans.

Pterois antennata has a laterally compressed rather deep body. There are 13 spines and 11 or 12 soft rays in the dorsal fin and 3 spines and 6 soft rays in its anal fin. There is a long tentacle above each eye. Coronal spines are present and there are many head spines. There are 17 simple fin rays in the pectoral fin. The mouth has many teeth in both upper and lower jaws, these teeth are very small and are arranged in clusters to either side of the mouth with a small patch of the front of the roof of the mouth. This species attains a maximum total length of 20 cm (7.9 in). The overall colour is reddish-brown marked with numerous darker slender to wide vertical bars, these are thin and angled on the caudal peduncle. There is a scattering of dark spots on the anal, dorsal and caudal fins. The head is marked with 3 dark brown bars, one of which is a diagonal bar running through the eye which ends in a large spot on the lower operculum. The long tentacles over each eye are banded and in larger adults there are bluish-black blotches close the pectoral fin bases.

(from Wikipedia)

Species images

Species images

This species has been seen on the following dives: