Blenny Watcher
Lembeh Strait, Indonesia ~ October 2012 Here is one of my favorite examples of mimicry in fishes: a Striped Fangblenny (Meiacanthus grammistes) model and its mimic, a juvenile bream, Scolopsis bilineatus. Neither fish is that uncommon on the Indo-Pacific reefs where we dive but this was the first time I took the time to follow a little Bridled Monocle Bream to see if it would lead me to the blenny that it is known to mimic. The relationship of this bream … Read more
October 2012 ~ Bermuda – an island where we ran wild with our obsessions! While I prepared to spend the morning bottle hunting with Tammy and Ken Marks, Chris Flook pulled up to our dive boat in his launch and rescued Ned, whisking him off to explore the Sargassum. An easterly wind had conveniently blown rafts of the seaweed into a nearby bay, giving Ned all the excuse he needed to jump ship. They came roaring back three hours later with a … Read more
The first coral spawning event Ned and I ever witnessed was in Key Largo, Florida in August 1995. It was a giddy night, punctuated by the thrill of actually witnessing what we had set out to see – something that doesn’t always happen. We described it in our 1995 Ocean Realm article (downloadable here). Since then, we have observed fish and invertebrate (including coral) spawning in many different places but the week after the September full moon in Bonaire remains … Read more
Bonaire, August 2012 ~ Happy Saturday! The BlennyWatcher is in Bonaire, where we’ve had a splendid two weeks catching up with news from old friends, meeting new and doing what we love most: scuba diving! This is our tenth year as resident naturalists at Buddy Dive, where we spend a month every summer talking fish with like-minded enthusiasts. Our dives have yielded some lovely, colorful images: I visited a Chain Moray, Echidna catenata, that has been in the same spot for … Read more
Update 2016 ~ I posted a correction to this blog back in October 2012, but I posted it in another blog post. Recently, someone contacted me for assistance in identifying something found on a beach and I realized I should have made that correction in this post, so here it is: The “parrotfish beaks” below that I found on a previous trip to Bermuda are not from parrotfish at all – they are chiton shells. An alert reader corrected me. You can … Read more
Today on Blennywatcher, I’m sharing images of two things that are not related, but caused us some confusion a few years ago. In Beangabang Bay, Indonesia, Ned and I encountered what we were certain was a very large squid egg case. It turned out not to be so, but at that moment we were certain that was what we had. It was long and tubular, similar in color and shape to the Diamond Squid egg case we’d seen in photos. We … Read more
June 2012 ~ Earlier this week I posted photos from the first week of our Lembeh Fish & Critter Hunt with Eco Divers Resort Lembeh. We sadly said goodbye to our friends from the Octopus Army and greeted a new crowd for Week 2 and wow, another super adventure! The group embraced the hit list of 30 animals with gusto and with the help of our superb dive guides, most had checked off the entire list by mid-week. One of … Read more
June 2012 ~ We are blogging from the center of Lembeh Strait, Indonesia this week. When I say we are in the center of the Strait, that is where we are, literally – out on Eco Divers’ day boat, posting through the miracle of Wi-Fi. This pinhead sized shrimp, photographed by Wendy McIlroy, exemplifies the reason we keep returning to Lembeh. Ned and I made our first dive here in 1999 and since, have made the 44-hour trip from our … Read more
Since we started the Blennywatcher Blog, we have met some really interesting people online. Two in particular have helped educate me about the subjects of my own posts and I am indebted to them for their willingness to share information. This past February, I posted video of a tiny frogfish and several juvenile lionfish that we observed riding around on Protoreaster nodosus sea stars (the link to that post is here). A few days later, Dr. Peter Wirtz contacted me after reading … Read more
Two years ago, on a dive site near Alor, Indonesia, I saw a fish I had never seen before. Last month, just over two years from my first sighting, we received word that the fish, collected by our friends, Dr. Gerald Allen and Dr. Mark Erdmann, has received its official name, Cirrhilabrus humanni. This post is about the small role we had in establishing the fish as a newly described species. So, back to the dive two years ago: Descending … Read more