Porcupine Fish Washes Ashore in the Corpus Christi, Texas Bay

My husband and I were taking our usual walk on the beach and we came across this strange little creature. A rare sight to see in the inner bays of the Gulf Coast this Porcupine fish (Diodontidae family) washed ashore in the Corpus Christi Bay. I say rare because my husband has lived here his whole life and has never seen one washed up. We often see them in gift shops inflated and dried out. After taking a few pictures and getting poked by it because we tried to pick it up (not a wise thing to do since some of these species are poisonous), I decided to find out if these little guys lived in this area. Sure enough they live around the world in shallow warm waters, and are common in the Gulf of Mexico; still it was unexpected to see this little creature in the inner bay next to the ship channel.

Going to several online information sites the porcupine fish, called so because of the sharp spikes protruding from its body when puffed up, are often confused with and called a blow fish or puffer fish. They are in fact cousins to the Puffer and Blow fish. The Puffers and Blow fish have sandpaper like skin instead of the spines. Our small fish that washed up on shore was one of the smaller species of the Porcupine fish that grow to only about 7 to 8 inches. There are only 20 species of the Porcupine fish while their Puffer cousin has a large family of 121 different species and comes from the Tetraodontidae family.

When they feel threatened, our porcupine fish and its cousins it will inflate by drawing water or air into their bodies. Doubling in size this makes it almost impossible for predators to eat them unless they have large mouths. Porcupines have a second defense, the large quantity of spines on its body that protrude when inflated. Because of this the Porcupine fish has few natural enemies except Sharks and Orcas.