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Interesting Creatures: The stonefish
Kaieteur News – The Stonefish is superbly camouflaged, often looking like an encrusted rock or lump of coral. The species is widely distributed throughout tropical, marine waters of the Indo-Pacific. It has stout dorsal fin spines which can inject an extremely poisonous venom. The Reef Stonefish has thirteen stout dorsal fin spines which can inject an extremely poisonous venom.
Identification Stonefishes are masters of camouflage and can blend in so perfectly with their surroundings that their prey, predators, and even human SCUBA divers have trouble seeing them at all.
Stonefishes look like an encrusted rock or lump of coral. Individuals are usually brown or grey and may have patches of yellow, orange or red. They almost always sit perfectly still, on the sea floor, in their preferred habitat of coral and rocky reefs, and their colors are often a perfect match for the substrate.
Some individuals have even been observed with algae growing on them. While this camouflage gives them further protection from predators, its primary purpose is to allow stonefish to ambush their prey. They eat other reef fishes and some bottom dwelling invertebrates, but they do not actively pursue these animals. Instead, they wait for dinner to come to them. Waiting for hours at a time, stonefish strike when their potential prey is less than their body length away. Their powerful jaws and large mouths create so much pressure that they are easily able to suck down their unsuspecting prey and swallow it whole.
Two species of stonefishes are recorded from Australia, the Reef Stonefish and the Estuary Stonefish, Synanceia horrida. One of the ways to tell the two species apart is the placement of the eyes. The eyes of the Reef Stonefish are separated by a deep depression, however those of the Estuary Stonefish are elevated and separated by a bony ridge.
Stonefish are only rarely eaten by people, and there is not a targeted fishery for this species, though individuals are sometimes caught for the private aquarium trade. Population trends are not currently known, but there is no evidence to suggest that human activity threatens the stonefish. However, as human activity does continue to threaten their habitat (coral reefs), it is important for scientists to continue to research this and other species, to ensure that populations are in fact stable.
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