Tide pool sculpin

Like all sculpins, tide pool sculpins are highly adapted for their environments and have developed a variety of structures... 

The ability to change colors to match their surroundings helps tide pool sculpins blend with the environment, enabling the fish to avoid many predators and providing them with camouflage while they wait to ambush their own prey. Their diet consists of crabs, shrimp, and the eggs of insects and other fish. 

Wooly sculpins spawn all year long, but the peak season is from November to May. The female deposits her eggs in nests where they are fertilized by males. Unlike many other tide pool fish, neither sculpin parent stays behind to guard the eggs, which generally hatch within 13 to 18 days. 

Sculpins are small but conspicuous fish in tide pool environments. A sculpin only grows to about 3 inches (7.5 cm) in length, and its coloration is either green or red with five irregular dark circles. The head is large in proportion to the rest of the slim, elongated body. If washed out of its home tide pool, a sculpin can use chemoreceptors to identify the specific chemical combinations that mark its home and then eventually make its way back to it. 

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