This is bathydemersal species which can be found at depths ranging from 100 to 2,900 metres (330 to 9,510 ft).

[3] The genus Ceratias is classified by the 5th edition of Fishes of the World as belonging to the family Ceratiidae in the suborder Ceratioidei of the anglerfish order Lophiiformes.

[5] Ceratias tentaculatus is sexually dimorphic and the metamorphosed females can be distinguished from the metamorphosed females of other species in the genus Ceratias by the morphology of its dark coloured esca which has two appendages at the tip of its bulb, these appandages are almost always forked or branched.

The pore of the esca is located at the apex of its bulb, and is slightly elecated on a pigmented papilla in all specimens with a standard length in excess of 75 mm (3.0 in).

[2] Ceratias tentaculatus has a circumglobal distribution in the Southern Ocean, where most of the specimens were taken between 35° and 68° S. Smaller specimens have also been collected from Saldanha Bay on the Atlantic Coast of the Western Cape of South Africa north to Delagoa Bay in Mozambique, in the Indian Ocean.