Bonaire
Bonaire, 2009 – Hatching jawfish eggs! A male jawfish has guarded these eggs in his mouth for close to a week, and we managed to photograph and video them hatching. It only took fifteen years to get the shot! We fell in love with jawfish in 1995 in Bimini. The first magazine article that Ned and I wrote together for Ocean Realm magazine was about Yellowhead Jawfish, Opistognathus aurifrons (a link to a scanned copy of the 1995 article is … Read more
BlennyWatcher’s 2016 Review: We didn’t post as much here last year as we would have liked though as diving goes, 2016 was a pretty good year. We added quite a few species to our life lists (including a blenny or two) and in our continued commitment to making at least one dive trip a year that is out of our comfort zone, we ventured into the cold water in the Azores. That led to a new experience – dry suit … Read more
Bonaire, September 2015 ~ Although our tally shows that we saw a number of species spawning last month, the September coral spawning event was just not very robust compared to past years (others who dive regularly in Bonaire agree). One of the things I had on my wish list was spawning Flower Coral, Eusmilia fastigiata, but this year, I never managed to catch any in the act of spawning. I have footage from our observations in previous years but I had … Read more
This is the most photographed Tessellated Blenny in the world and likely the most observed. I am certain of this. I spent hours with this fish and its reefmates – I think I might have been obsessed. A few days after we arrived on Bonaire for our annual 5-week stay, our friends Allison and Carlos Estape (fellow fish surveyors) stopped by and told us about a site that had Tessellated Blennies (Hypsoblennius invemar) living in the barnacle shells. An abandoned, submerged mooring … Read more
Team Blenny is on the job in Bonaire – check out the results of last year’s hunt on our newly created Bonaire Blenny Page. There are photos and hand-drawn maps with info about where we found them last year. “Like” us on our Blennywatcher Facebook page for updates about our 2014 finds. Bonaire is a super place for fishwatching because so many different habitats are accessible as shore dives, giving divers the freedom to dive wherever (well, almost), whenever and … Read more
We’re heading to Bonaire soon and that means blenny hunting! In Ned’s photographs, enlarged on a computer screen, the differences between the Orangespotted Blenny, Hypleurochilus springeri and the Tessellated Blenny, Hypsoblennius invemar are obvious but unmagnified they looked very similar. Both can be found in the same habitat: empty barnacle shells or other small holes on dock pilings and always shallow, where even the gentlest surge makes it almost impossible to lock in and really get a good, long look … Read more
Here are a few more favorite Blennywatcher images from 2013. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will already have seen most of our favorite images, but some didn’t make into a post and others were published earlier this year in Alert Diver, Scuba Diving or Wetpixel. So, we’re ringing in the New Year with a few more photos from 2013, starting with this Anchor Tuskfish displaying quite a mouthful of teeth. The menacing look is quite … Read more
And a double take is just what I did when the big round eyes of this Shorthead Blenny rolled onto Ned’s laptop screen. Something wasn’t quite right with the picture so I took a second look and the image fell into place: The tiny blenny’s googly eyes were rotated backwards staring directly behind the fish’s head at Ned’s approaching camera port—a vision of visual dexterity that would make any blenny lover proud. Ned’s preoccupation with backward focused blenny eyes began … Read more
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