Variegated lizardfish

The variegated lizardfish (Synodus variegatus) earns its name honestly: its pointed snout and wide-mouthed head look eerily like a lizard's, and even its pose is reptilian – propped on its pectoral fins with head raised, it sits on coral or sand like a lizard basking on a rock. Its reddish-brown marbled pattern adapts to the surroundings, fading on sand and glowing on red coral rock, so you often notice it only when you have almost swum right over it.

It is an ambush predator and a champion of patience: it waits motionless, eyes trained upward, and when a smaller fish passes overhead it launches like a rocket, seizing it in open water. Its mouth is a genuine trap – tiny, needle-sharp, backward-curving teeth line not only the jaws but even the tongue, leaving no way out. It handles surprisingly large meals too, swallowing prey approaching its own body length.

Around Hurghada you can meet it on almost every dive and snorkel trip – you just need to know where to look: scan the tops of coral heads and the sand patches. Two individuals often sit side by side, perpendicular or "parked" across one another – a favourite composition of underwater photographers. Approach slowly and it lets you within arm's reach, then materialises somewhere else in the blink of an eye.