Lizardfish?

Can anyone help me identify these two individual fish, which look like colour variations of the same species (to my admittedly untrained eye!)

Location: Southern Caribbean, in the Grenadines.

Depth: between 1 - 1.5 meters

Fish: about 7 - 8 inches / 18 - 20 cm long

Additional: the last picture has been over saturated to enhance the colours but otherwise the image has not been manipulated

The first looks like a reef scorpionfish (Scorpaenodes caribbaeus). However your size of 7-8 inches is 2-3 inches longer than the largest specimen on record. Are you confident about your estimate?

The last photo appears to be a hairy blenny (Labrisomus nuchipinnis). They reach up to 8.5 inches in length.

Hope that helps,

Kris

Hi Kris

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'm pretty sure that the first one (which you said might be a Reef Scorpionfish) was certainly no shorter than 6 inches. Also, I don't think it was as deep in the body as the pictures in my ID book of that species. I've been back through my RAW files and unfortunately I didn't take a photo of the whole fish.

I did find another photo of the second species though and from this angle it looks like 'Hairy Blenny' is spot on, so thanks for that!