Blenny
We found it – the Tessellated Blenny – a great way to end week 5 of our Bonaire Blenny Challenge! Ned teased me for telling the world that we were looking for this fish because he had lost faith in finding it. Although I received reports of previous sightings, all we found were Orangespotted blennies, fish that look similar at first glance. Our friend Ellen Muller took it upon herself to make inquiries and sent me a detailed list of … Read more
Calm seas marked our Bonaire Blenny Challenge week 4, enabling us to get into some really shallow areas. Years ago, during a REEF field survey trip, local members showed me a Twinhorn Blenny (Coralliozetus cardonae) but it was so tiny, I didn’t realize how beautifully marked the males are. Then a few years ago, I saw a photo taken in 2001 by our friends, the Wilk family (of ReefNet fame) and the fish went onto my target list. Les Wilk … Read more
Bonaire, September 2013 ~ Week 3 of our Blenny Challenge and we’re a bit silly and punchy from being tossed around in the surf. We wanted to explore the east side of the island – the windward, or Wild Side as it is known – but conditions have to be absolutely perfect in order for us to enter the water with our cameras and roll around in 2 to 5 feet of water for 2 hours. We watched weather sites … Read more
We just wrapped up week 2 of the Bonaire Blenny Challenge and we are on a roll! Following a suggestion from our friend, Bonaire naturalist Jerry Ligon, we visited his home reef, Bari and scored with an Orange-spotted Blenny, Hypleurochilus springeri. We first dived with Jerry on a REEF Field survey back in the ’90s and he is still one of the best sources on the island for fish and bird watching (check out his Biological Tours of Bonaire). On … Read more
We are in Bonaire and on a blenny hunt! I’m calling it the Bonaire Blenny Challenge. This is the start of our five-week stay, as resident naturalists, at Buddy Dive Resort. In addition to presenting slide shows and diving with fellow underwater enthusiasts, we have many opportunities to explore on our own and I always try to set some goals for the month. One year we set out to record a jawfish releasing its hatching eggs; last year it was … Read more
Universal Truth of Blenny Watching #1: The desirability of the blenny is inversely proportional to the conditions in which one must dive to see/photograph it. Longhorn Blenny? High on our list and took two 90-minute dives in surge to get the shots (see last year’s post here). A blenny with eggs? Seaweed blennies are pretty common in Florida, but the Seaweed Blenny with eggs was in 72-degree water with 3-foot visibility (see that post here). So why would I even … Read more
Photo Friday: Little Things ~ We’re all about little things at the BlennyWatcher Blog. Of course we like bigger animals – sharks, whales, rays (known as charismatic megafauna to some) but the little things, blennies, gobies, shrimp – are more our speed. When we decided to launch this blog, we chose the blenny as our poster fish and of course, this little 4-cm. blenny from the genus Salarias was our first choice for an icon.
October 2012 ~ Here are a few more observations from our most recent trip to Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Batanta, one of four main islands, is located just a few cruising hours from the port of Sorong and is usually the first and last stops on our itineraries. That has never been enough for me so for this most recent trip aboard the Dewi Nusantara, we planned an all-Batanta itinerary. The heavily forested island has been my favorite for beachcombing, birdwatching and … Read more
Bonaire, September 2012 ~ A new species for our life lists but the Longhorn Blenny images did not come easily. Ned describes our adventure in the latest post about our September stay with Buddy Dive in Bonaire over on our travel journal: marinelifeblog.com but I just had to share another super close-up blenny face here: (video at the end of this post) Longhorn Blennies (Hypsoblennius exstochilus) are in the family Blenniidae (Combtooth blennies.) They prefer shallow, surgy habitats in the … Read more
Bonaire, September 2012 ~ This is why they are called spinyheads! I have been examining Ned’s photo of a Spinyhead Blenny (Acanthemblemaria spinosa) for the past 30 minutes – I cannot get over the detail. Even with a flat port, diopter and tripod, I have never been able to capture a close-up video portrait that would allow me to examine the cirri and spines on the fuzzy little heads of these 1-inch fish. The amount and location of the cranial … Read more
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