Bonaire
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 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
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
Graysbys are small Caribbean seabasses that are fairly solitary. We noticed that they are much more active during the same week that the corals spawn and it is a good time to see fighting fish action. Some times they lunged at each other, sometimes they just stared each other down, then one or the other would take off to join a waiting fish, presumably a female. We were fairly certain the battles were territorial wars connected to spawning activities, but … Read more
Note: This post was republished on April 23, 2021 to include more information about our experience. The updated story is here: https://www.blennywatcher.com/2021/04/23/yellowhead-jawfish-hatching-eggs/ Bonaire, 2009 – A jawfish releasing its eggs – we finally got the shot – and it only took fifteen years! We fell in love with jawfish back in 1995 when we were working on the Reef Fish Behavior book. In fact, the first magazine article that Ned and I wrote together for Ocean Realm magazine was … Read more
Bimini, 1995 – I noticed something unusual – a group of Yellowhead Wrasse (Halichoeres garnoti), including several normally solitary terminal phase males swimming together in a tight little group near the bottom. We were making a dusk dive at Turtle Rocks, looking for fish spawning action. We had already spent many afternoons watching the Yellowheads spawn. This little group was swimming with purpose, but it didn’t look like spawning. They swam a regular pattern for over twenty minutes, visiting several … Read more
Bonaire – I needed video of schools of fish to illustrate a teaching point for a REEF fish identification class so we headed to a site with known schools of Smallmouth Grunts, Haemulon chrysargyreum. The grunts normally drift sedately in small schools but today there seemed to be a troublemaker in the group. Every time I approached, one fish would panic and send the whole school fleeing. When I looked up from my viewfinder, I realized the culprit was a … Read more
August 2007, Bonaire – We had just arrived on the island when the call came from our dear friend TC Panecaldo. She knew we had just checked into Buddy Dive, our home for the next five weeks, but would we like to see hatching turtles? A friend from Sea Turtle Conservation Bonaire was monitoring a nest and was willing to let us ride over to Klein Bonaire but we would have to leave right away to make it in … Read more
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