Dog Faced/Blackspotted Puffer Fish

Description:

Arothron nigropunctatus, also known as the Blackspotted puffer or the Dog-faced puffer, is a demersal Marine fish belonging to the family Tetraodontidae. Arothron nigropunctatus is a small sized fish which grows up to 33 cm length. Its body is oval shape, spherical et relatively elongated. The skin is not covered with scales. The fish has no pelvic fin and no lateral line.The dorsal fin and the anal fin are small, symmetric and located at the end of the body. Its snout is short with two pairs of nostrils and its mouth is terminal with four strong teeth. The background coloration is variable and can be grey, light brown, bluish, bluish dark, bright yellow, orangey yellow and also sometimes bi-color like bluish and yellow. Dark coloration occurs around the eyes and the mouth. The skin is strewed with dark blotches which vary in size and shape. This specimen was seen on a night dive, getting cleaned by a cleaner shrimp.

Habitat:

This species is found in tropical waters from the Indian Ocean to the center islands of the Pacific Ocean, that means the Indo-Pacific area bur except the Red Sea. It lives close to external reef slopes and lagoons from the surface to 25 m depth

Notes:

Arothron nigropunctatus secretes a violent poison, the tetrodotoxin, which protect it from voracious predators. In order to ward off potential enemies, they can inflate their bodies by swallowing air or water. Pufferfish, called Fugu in Japan is a delicacy in Japanese culinary but need to be properly prepared to avoid the tetrodoxin, a deadly toxin that is up to 1,200 times more poisonous than cyanide. The poison in one pufferfish is enough to kill up to 30 humans and there is no known antidote for it. Every year, there are Japanese who died from consuming improperly prepared Fugu.