A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Histrio histrio
Sargassumfish - this species of frogfish, the only one with worldwide distribution, spends its life floating along in the currents clinging to seaweed, debris, empty coconuts, or anything else it might find. They have special pectoral fins so they can cling on to seaweed and crawl over it, even out of the water for a bit to escape potential underwater predators. On Oct 26th, we found 5 of these little frogfish washed up in the sargassum on the beach in front of our resort. We transferred them to containers filled with saltwater and sargassum, swam them out to deeper water, and released them into large rafts of sargassum to continue their lives as drifters.
Mainly sargassum, a brown macroalgae (seaweed), but have also been found in coconuts, tin cans, jack fruits, and potentially almost anything floating in the ocean currents.
third picture is me releasing one of the frogfish into the ocean.
Spotted on Oct 26, 2014
Submitted on Nov 23, 2014
3 Comments
Fantastic !
i believe so. there are pelagic forms of sargassum, as well as those that are removed during storms from reefs. We see large amounts of this sargassum here in the Philippines at certain times of year but not year round. Going out in a few minutes to check for more in the new batch of sargassum that just washed up.
Very interesting spotting ! Thanks for sharing. Did not know that Sargassum is seen in waters around the Philippines - a pelagic form perhaps ?