Yellow Longlure Frogfish
These are one of the closest family to the Angler Fish that we have, without the depth. Frogfish are about a fist size, or even smaller. This depends on the type of frogfish. The type we will discuss here is the Longlure Frogfish. The Longlure Frogfish is found along the Caribbean, including St. Lucia.
These fish are so amazing in the sense that they camouflage extremely well with their background. Many of them change to the colour sponges, corals even seagrass beds they are living on. Islands that you would find high numbers of these fish are Bonaire, Barbados, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica and St. Croix, however they can be found all over the Caribbean. The Longlure Frogfish mimics its family in the Angler Fish with a spine which is used like a modern fishing rod, located above their head. The rod is called the illicium, while the bait like appendage is the esca. Most animals fall a prey due to curiosity more than hunting to this trick. The “rod” works mainly night time, as the vibration of the esca, attracts prey to the frogfish.
Frogfish set out its illicium with a small esca
When hunting, the frogfish has one of the fastest bites, to the point where schooling fish will not even realize their neighbor is gone. Approximately 6 millisecond is the time it takes for a frogfish to vacuum up a prey along with large amounts of water. The prey of the frogfish is varied from crustaceans, to fish. Many of them have been found to just having a gluttonous behavior, being found dead with pufferfish in their mouth. However, a frogfish can eat a scorpionfish without any problems.
Mating with the frogfish is just as bizarre as their looks. The female frogfish who would usually begin swelling up. When she is almost ready, a male, which is usually the smaller of the two would show up and stay close to the female. When she has peaked in her swelling, the male then begins to nudge her. As she goes up the water column, the male nudges her stomach until she releases her gelatinous ee eggs, which can hold thousands of eggs. Once the eggs are in the water column, the male then uses his sperm to fertilize the eggs. All this action is extremely fast paste. The eggs as they mature, allows the scroll like fold of the eggs to unravel and then as they hatch becomes pelagic yolk-sac larvae, that will sink to the bottom, to become frogfish.
Red frogfish