Fish discovered off Ambon prefers to crawl, not swim

The fish, sighted in Indonesian waters off Ambon Island was spotted by Buck and Fitrie Randolph, part-owners of Maluku Divers and dive guide Toby Fadirsyair, who found and photographed an individual Jan. 28 in Ambon harbor. A second adult has since been seen and two more -- small, and obviously juveniles -- were spotted March 26, off Ambon. One of the adults laid a mass of eggs, just spotted Tuesday. Toby Fadirsyair said he may have seen something similar 10 or 15 years ago but the coloring was different.

Reference books were consulted but nothing similar to the fish photographed in January was found. Seeking international fish experts eventually led them to Ted Pietsch, a UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences.

"As soon as I saw the photo I knew it had to be an anglerfish because of the leglike pectoral fins on its sides," says Ted Pietsch, who has published 150 scholarly articles and several books on anglerfishes and is the world's leading authority on them. In the last 50 years scientists have described only five new families of fishes and none of them were even remotely related to anglerfishes. "Only anglerfishes have crooked, leglike structures that they use to walk or crawl along the seafloor or other surfaces."

Anglerfishes - also known as frogfishes or toadfishes - are found the world over and typically have lures growing from their foreheads that they wave or cause to wiggle in order to attract prey. The newly found individuals have no lures so they seek their prey differently, burrowing themselves into crevices and cracks of coral reefs in search of food. It's probably part of the reason that they've typically gone unnoticed until now.

"Several times I saw these fish work themselves through an opening that seemed much smaller than the fish, sometimes taking a minute or more to get all the way through," says David Hall, an underwater natural history photographer who was able to dive with Maluku Divers and take additional photos of the new find. "They must have pretty tough skin to keep from being scraped and cut, but there is no evidence of superficial injury or scars in my photographs."

New family of fish
With its unusual flattened face, the fish's eyes appear to be directed forward, something Pietsch says he's never seen in his 40 years of fish research. Its flat face and forward-looking eyes are just two of a host of reasons why Pietsch thinks the fish probably represents a new family. Most fishes have eyes on either side of their head so that each eye sees something different. Only very few fishes have eyes whose radius of vision overlaps in front, providing binocular vision, a special attribute well developed in humans that provides the ability to accurately judge distance.

Whether the new fish represent a new family will entail DNA testing and a close examination of a specimen, says Pietsch, whose anglerfish work is currently funded by the National Science Foundation. Scientists have already described 18 different families of anglerfishes and this is probably a 19th, Pietsch says. Families are large groupings, for example, all dog species belong to the larger family that includes wolves, coyotes and, even, hyenas.

Randolph says the similar colour pattern of the two adults surprises him because he typically sees variations in skin color between members of the same anglerfish species and has even seen individual anglerfish that change colours depending on the surroundings. When only a single fish had been sighted, Randolph and Andy Shorten, co-owner of Maluku Divers, kept the find quiet to protect the animal. With more individuals being found, and having a better idea of where to look to find others, the two became comfortable enough to post images on the firm's Web site and in X-Ray Magazine.