By Nidhi Subbaraman<\/p>\n
You won’t meet a more charming photobomber than this startled porcupine fish.<\/p>\n
One evening in November, photographer Andrey Nekrasov was on a dive looking for nocturnal wildlife, near Sharm al-Sheik in the Red Sea, off the coast of Egypt.<\/p>\n
The group was at a depth of about 26 feet (8 meters) when this startled specimen \u2014 a porcupine fish \u2014 joined the party.<\/p>\n
“He accidentally hit me in the flashlight beam,” Nekrasov wrote to NBC News in an email. “But he did not see me.”<\/p>\n
Neksarov sneaked a photo of the fish before it inflated, then took a few of the puffed-up photobomber before swimming away.<\/p>\n
Robert Robins, a senior biologist at the Division of Ichthyology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, identified the fish as a member of the “diodontid” family, and a relative of the family known as pufferfish.<\/p>\n
When startled, both puffers and porcupine fish swell up by swallowing water into a stomach pouch \u2014 but “they can perform the same trick out of water using air!” Robins told NBC News in an email.<\/p>\n
Some species carry a toxin in their organs, which is lethal if the fish is eaten without being cleaned.
\nFirst published February 11th 2014, 12:26 am<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Nidhi Subbaraman You won’t meet a more charming photobomber than this startled porcupine fish. One evening in November, photographer Andrey Nekrasov was on a dive looking for nocturnal wildlife, near Sharm al-Sheik in the Red Sea, off the coast of Egypt. The group was at a depth of about 26 feet (8 meters) when …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-te-public"],"yoast_head":"\n