thoughts on sculpin color

I tried keeping freshwater sculpin before, sadly summer heat does them in. (they thrive in the colder months and never had one eat any similar sized fish).

They are amazing at color changes, doing instant changes of their spots and patches from black to white to brown to grey.

Recently I got into salt collecting with Justin (bumpylemon). That got me curious and had me reading up on the saltwater sculpins. I found some much more impressive coloration among them and I wonder if the rules for color work differently in the ocean? do they have a larger color range? is it breeding color? Perhaps random mutations?

a shorthorned sculpin, a dull grey fish.



make that a bright orange fish



or the sea raven another dull brownish fish



bright orange fish?



lemon yellow fish?!?



What's up with the crazyness of saltwater sculpin coloration?

Also, my first experience with a sculpin was on a deep sea fishing trip as a kid, it was a 6-8 inch dark reddish brown fish with a huge mouth, fanlike fins, and horns over the eyes caught off the isles of shoals. The crew warned me not to touch it and unhooked it themselves with thick gloves on like they do for dogfish sharks. Why was the sculpin considered dangerous? Do they bite? have spines? venom? or does it just look nasty enough for them to assume the worst?

Stream-dwelling sculpin are constantly exposed to visual predators in brightly-lit environments. Perhaps the saltwater species have greater leeway due to often low-light environments.

With regards to fishermen, I suspect they don't distinguish between sculpin and nasty species like stonefish and scorpionfish, which are rather similar-looking.

Bright colours usually mean danger. Maybe there is some sort of harmful or unpleasant thing in the sculpin, or they are impersonating something else.

Those bright reds and yellows you're seeing on marine sculpins brought to the surface would just look like varying shades of brown and grey at the depths where these fish normally live. Hard to believe, but those are probably camouflage colors.