Blennywatcher
Happy Friday! Blennywatcher is on the road, so I’m sharing some amusing marine life encounters from the archives. We don’t seek interactions with fish and critters – sometimes they just happen. The Goliath Grouper, hanging out in an area where some dive operators fed fish, stalked us, hoping for a hand-out. The head shaking behavior, shown in my video at the end of this post is interesting because a friend showed me similar footage of a grouper in Bonaire, where … Read more
Bermuda, October 2012 ~ During a dive at Nonsuch Island three years ago, I found an intact marble bottle. I wasn’t hunting for bottles; I was supposed to be counting fish, but the tiniest hint of aqua glass caught my eye and I started digging. It took about five minutes to free the sediment-filled bottle from the soft sand bottom but I was hooked at the last tug. Before I continue, I need to do some record straightening. A few … 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
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, 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
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
Bali, Indonesia ~ I spotted the Blue Ringed Octopus as it swam across an open expanse of rubble and landed on a small rock. It was late afternoon and the current was quite strong, so I had decided to head back to the shallows where there was more light and where it would be easier to get back to the boat. I spotted the octopus and forgot all about the marginal conditions. We have had more success observing blue rings catching … Read more
On our recent trip to Bali, I added a new blenny species to my Blennywatcher life list and observed what we are sure was spawning. Excited by my initial sighting, I chased a little Smith’s Fangblenny, Meiacanthus smithi, down the reef, where to my surprise, it joined a milling group, whose attention seemed to be focused on a blenny peeking out of a hole. The blenny in the hole would emerge, gently lunge at one of the group and swim … 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
Blenny Watcher is back after a hiatus – With the help of family and friends, I have been caring for my 81-year old mother, who had spinal surgery to repair damage caused by a serious fall. An inspiration to us all, she is preparing to resume teaching her art classes next month and has shooed me off to get back to my own work. Although I do not possess her artistic abilities, I did inherit her overexcitable sense of curiosity, … Read more