Once you can actually find it, it stands apart with it's clean pastel pink hue.

At the same time it looks mournful, or maybe haughty, permanently down at the mouth, with a sulky, protruding lower jaw.

It's in the scorpionfish order, and looks more similar to the waspfishes than anything else, but in some ways it behaves more frogfish-like, the smooth reddish coloration helping it hide in plain sight amongst sponges, where it is notoriously difficult to find.

It lives at regular scuba diving depths of 5 to 30 metres, and is not particularly rare or uncommon, and it can grow bigger than your hand.

It can just be rather difficult to find.

Divers will often swim straight past without even realising it is there.

Common names of animals can be illogical, odd or just plain wrong. Crabeater seals never eat crabs.

Peacock mantis shrimps are neither peacocks, nor mantises, nor shrimps.

And blackfishes, also known as pilot whales, are not fishes and are dolphins rather than whales, are dark grey/brown rather than black, and are famously bad as pilots.

Common names also vary; the same bird that Europeans call the 'Great Northern Diver' is the 'Common Loon' to north Americans, and the 'Grey Nurse Shark' (which isn't a nurse shark) is known elsewhere as 'Raggedtooth' or 'Sand Tiger' (it's not a tiger shark either!).

The common name of our splendid fish has a different problem; it's outdated, politically incorrect, ignorant and rude.

This fish has been called the 'Red Indian Fish', because the magnificent crest of spines brought to mind to an unknown diver of yesteryear the headdress of some native Americans.

'Native American Fish' seems odd to be attached to an Australian endemic, and it's a magnificent member of the prowfish family, so I'm going with 'Magnificent Prowfish'.

At least a few of the fish inhibit the western shallows of Cabbage Tree Island just outside of Port Stephens heads.

It's difficult to know how many as they can be so hard to spot.

Local marine scientist Dr David Harasti suggests an interesting way to locate prowfishes.

He had entered an underwater photography competition held on a Night Dive at the Jervis Bay docks.

All of the entrants were keen to find a photogenic prowfish but came away frustrated.

Dave spotted little footprints in the seabed with a little line in the sand, created by a trailing tail.

He followed this strange trail for about 10 metres. At the end of it, of course was a prowfish.

The next night Dave looked for more such trails there, and very quickly this technique became his reliable go-to method.

The family Pataecidae includes only three members of the scorpionfish group, all known only from Australian waters, known as the Australian Prowfishes; the Warty Prowfish Aetapcus maculatus, the Whiskered Prowfish Neopataecus waterhousii and of course Pataecus fronto, the 'Red Indian Fish' or Magnificent Prowfish.

Malcolm Nobbs is a recreational diver and photographer from Nelson Bay. Jamie Watts is a marine ecologist from the United Kingdom. The pair regularly collaborate on marine life articles.

To showcase the Port's incredible underwater world the Examiner is collaborating with divers, marine scientists and photographers on a new series that explores life Beneath the Surface.