Silver Puffer

The silver-cheeked toadfish is very similar to the oceanic pufferfish but more elongated and with a symmetrical caudal (tail) fin. Its back is grey or brown with darker spots and it has a white belly. A characteristic silver band runs along the sides of the fish. The silver-cheeked toadfish can measure up to 40 centimetres (16 in).

The species is common in the tropical waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans. It is a recent Lessepsian migrant into the eastern Mediterranean Sea, which it reached through the Suez Canal, and it is spreading towards the western Mediterranean. It has been caught off the coasts of Israel, the south of Turkey, in Cyprus, the south coasts of mainland Greece, Crete, and Rhodes. In 2013 it was reported off the waters off Lampedusa Island in the central Mediterranean, and in 2015 off Malta and also in waters near the town of Bečići, Montenegro, and in Vlore in Albania on the southeastern Adriatic Sea. One specimen was caught in Gruissan (Aude, France) in the summer of 2014. Greek authorities sent out an alert about the fish. A few days before 9 February 2022, a specimen was caught by Croatian fishermen near the island of Pašman in the Adriatic with the Croatian Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries issuing a warning on its Facebook page about the dangers of handling and consuming the fish. Currently the westernmost record is from the Strait of Gibraltar. In its native range (in the Red Sea) the silver-cheeked toadfish lives on rocky bottoms from shallow coastal waters down to a 250 m depth (820 ft). In December 2018, A Semana, a Cape Verde Islands paper published that this fish was caught in its waters, off West Africa. …