Frogfish

Photo: Marine Explorer (Dr John Turnbull) · CC BY-NC-SA

Painted frogfish colonise the algae-covered iron surfaces and encrusted hull plates of the Dutch Bay wrecks, their ability to match the colour of encrusting sponges and algal turf rendering them essentially invisible until movement or the patient eye of a macro-focused diver reveals their outline. They are sit-and-wait predators equipped with a modified dorsal spine that functions as a lure — the illicium — which they wave above their cavernous mouths to draw in small fish. Dutch Bay's wrecks provide the textured, sponge-covered substrate that frogfish favour, and multiple species are resident across the site complex.