Species #128 — Fluffy Sculpin

Undoubtedly my favorite marine micros, Fluffy Sculpin are just gorgeous little fish. This picture doesn’t do the species justice.

Species: Fluffy Sculpin (Oligocottus snyderi)
Location: Oregon Coast
Date: June 20, 2018

Do you believe in love at first sight?

I’m not sure I did, but then I looked at a picture of a Fluffy Sculpin, the most beautiful little fish you ever did see. To further sell me on it, God made sure it comes in three designer colors: green, red, and brown.

Fluffy Sculpins are, as much as is possible for a fish, actually fluffy. They have tons of cirri, little sensory receptors common in sculpins, all over the body. They are especially prevalent around the head and lend to the fish’s name.

Add to their fluffy hugability the bright, vivid base palette and a lapis lazuli-and-white checkerboard throat, and you might just be talking about the most striking fish in the Pacific Northwest.

My first one fell for my bold pickup line: a bit of shrimp on a micro hook dangling into a surf-line tidepool on an outgoing low tide.

Though visibility wasn’t great to begin with, I also had to contend with a green fish in a verdant sea of kelp and sea lettuce which didn’t make things any easier.

One I landed the fish and saw it’s unmistakable underside, I knew I had a Fluffy.

Fluffy Sculpins have a scrawled white throat and vivid blue belly.

It was my first time microfishing with a photo tank, but the water was so salty that it made my photos turn out worse than I’d expected.

Still, I got some decent pictures.

Gotta love the photo tank. I kept half a dozen species in there at a time. In the back is a partially-obscured Kelp Greenling, a Cabezon, and a Tidepool Sculpin, but the Fluffies stole the show.

I landed dozens of fish that day. Though Tidepool Sculpin and Kelp Greenling were the most numerous, I did manage a few more fluffies, including a red one.