Island Gurnard

The island gurnard is a deep-water sea robin with a heavily armoured, spiny head and separate lower pectoral rays that work like feet, letting it walk along the bottom and feel in the sand for food.

It lives singly on deep offshore slopes, typically between 320 and 457m, sometimes buried in the sand and more active at night.

Its range across the Indo-West Pacific is wider than once thought. It is best known from Mauritius and Réunion, and also occurs in the Mozambique Channel off western Madagascar and along the coasts of Mozambique and Tanzania, with specimens linked to the Philippines and Queensland in Australia. Unlike the gurnards of shallow beaches, this one stays on deep tropical and subtropical bottoms.

Its food is crustaceans and other invertebrates. Sea robins also have poisonous spines on the back, and they grunt, which is where the name comes from: gurnard traces back to a French word for grunting.