Meet our May Fish of the Month, the Padded Sculpin, Artedius fenestralis — a pint-sized master of disguise from the Pacific coast.
Survey Regions: Padded Sculpins range from the eastern Aleutian Islands of Alaska south to central California. REEF volunteers document them throughout the Pacific Coast (PAC) survey region.
Size: Small — up to about 14 cm / 5.5 in total length. Most individuals divers see are smaller.
Identifying Features: Padded Sculpins are champions of camouflage, with mottled brown, reddish, olive, and gray coloration broken up by four to five darker saddles across the back. The key ID feature is a distinctive patch of fleshy cirri (small skin tufts) behind each eye, with more on the snout. Those postocular cirri separate them from the similar Smoothhead Sculpin (Artedius lateralis), which lacks them. Found from the intertidal zone down to about 55 m / 180 ft, most often in shallow rocky reef and kelp habitats.
Fun Facts: First described in 1883 by American ichthyologists David Starr Jordan and Charles Henry Gilbert. The species name fenestralis comes from the Latin fenestra (“window”), likely a nod to the bold dark saddles on their bodies. The genus name Artedius honors Peter Artedi (1705–1735), the Swedish “father of ichthyology,” who drowned in an Amsterdam canal at age 30. Like many sculpins, they’re ambush predators — sitting motionless and using suction feeding to inhale small crustaceans like amphipods, isopods, and shrimp. Train your eye to spot those telltale head cirri, and a whole world of small, beautifully patterned Pacific sculpins opens up.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for our next Fish of the Month.
Photo by Sara Thiebaud