What's a lumpsucker?

Wookie · Jan 13, 2014

I've recently seen many photo's of lumpsuckers. Jody, NWgratefuldiver, even TS&M seem to know what a lumpsucker is. I see pictures of.... Nothing except a sponge, really. What is a lumpsucker, do they have faces, and why are they so rare?

Diver0001 · Jan 13, 2014

It's a fish. We have one species locally (Cyclopterus lumpus) but I'm sure there are more varieties of them.

R..

TSandM · Jan 13, 2014

Imagine a golf ball covered in flat scales, colored anything from pale green to screaming hot pink, with goggle eyes, and swimming by frantically buzzing its pectoral fins and looking for all the world like a demented helicopter. That's a lumpsucker. Small ones are pea-sized, and big ones are golf-ball sized, and they live in the eel grass at our Redondo Beach site, in 20 feet of water, in the wintertime, and they're hard to find except at night.

Here's a delightful video that captures why we go to such lengths to find these silly fish:

[video=youtube;muq3MQwjK-k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muq3MQwjK-k[/video]

Wookie · Jan 13, 2014

Very cute. Ambush predators? Looks a bit like a frogfish.

jodylynn007 · Jan 13, 2014

Local dive video of the search for a lumpsucker (not my own): http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/western-canada/473440-lumpsucker-dive.html

The lumpsucker is spotted near the end of the footage.

Lumpsuckers are AWESOMELY cute, but really hard to photograph!!!

Jim Lapenta · Jan 13, 2014

Looks like a pokeymon character.

koozemani · Jan 13, 2014

Very cute

TSandM · Jan 13, 2014

They are, as you can see, very poor swimmers, and are primary found adhering to some type of structure with the sucker which is a specialized development of the pelvic fins. They eat sessile invertebrates like worms and small molluscs. I don't think they can move fast enough to ambush anything!

Insta-Gator · Jan 13, 2014

Gotta send that video to my granddaughter.

Nocturne · Jan 13, 2014

TSandM:
I don't think they can move fast enough to ambush anything!

I've seen them ambush. I've had one get used to my dive light and it was feeding right in front of me. It would wait for tiny critters come by and then woosh! dart in and chomp up! I had no idea they could move so fast!

-yelloweye

What's a lumpsucker?

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