A pale fish with a sail on its back and six trailing feelers, moving slowly over open sand at night. The eyespot at the front of that sail is a decoy - a predator that goes for the obvious eye finds itself biting a fin full of venomous spines.
The feelers are the interesting part. Three rays under each pectoral fin are free of the membrane, lengthened and packed with taste receptors, and the fish drags them across the sand as it moves, tasting the bottom ahead of itself. What it finds - small crustaceans, worms - it takes with a short strike. It is chemical searching rather than looking, which is why it works in the dark and on mud where nothing is visible.
By day it buries itself completely and is effectively unfindable.
Twenty centimeters (8 in), venomous, and one of the few members of the family that a diver meets away from the reef entirely - on the flat, at night, usually by accident.
The genus. Apistus Cuvier 1829 - apistes (not to be trusted or perfidious). ETYFish
The species. Apistus carinatus (Bloch & Schneider 1801) - keeled. ETYFish
- tall sail-like dorsal fin with a black eyespot at the front
- three long free rays under each pectoral fin, trailed along the bottom
- pale pink-brown body with silvery sides
- length up to 20 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats to Apistus carinatus in the Persian Gulf.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
