Blennies & More... — s/v Reach

I love blennies! They are petite, colorful, varied and expressive. I just realized that my blenny obsession is not unlike my warbler obsession. Warblers are small birds of gorgeous colors, patterns and bubbly personalities.

Blennies underwater may stay still for a bit of camouflage and then dart off quickly.

In birding, warblers are small, cute and pose nicely… if only for a split second.

They are both always a challenge to spot and consequently, a treasured find.

Some species are common and you get to see them every snorkel/walk. In warbler terms, everyone knows that the palm warblers and yellow-rumped warblers are the most common birds to be found. This doesn’t exempt you from checking out all movement and songs, in search for rare treasures.

In Bahama waters, the rosy blennies and saddled blennies are always seen, and no less cute for being so common. There is a bit of color variation even within a species whether blenny or bird, not to mention that males and females are sexually dimorphic. Watching bird/blenny behavior is also a great learning experience.

There is an island location here where redlip blennies are also seen everywhere. They are large as far as blennies go (3”) and are usually black with red cirri and lips, in the combtooth blenny family (there is also a gray form). They are incredibly fun to watch feeding and then returning to the same perch over and over again.

Other times, you thrill to see a “new” or rare species once or twice in a lifetime, like the elusive blackcheek blenny I recently discovered.

I’ve come to realize that it is time in the field that often gets you the rare sightings. You don’t tire of all of the “normal” days of visiting the usuals, since that brings you that one time where the magic happens.

Thanks to good weather, my water time has been high so far this year. With increased time came a few exciting finds so far.

This goldline blenny popped out into the open as I was taking the photo of a redlip blenny. It was much smaller (1.5”) than the redlip and is in the same genus (Malacoctenus) as the rosy and saddled blennies with their pointy snouts. I have only seen the goldline blenny one other time in 2016, also in the Bahamas.

While photographing the goldline blenny, a third blenny popped out even smaller at 1”, a roughhead triplefin. Common in my Panama and Honduras underwater experience, I don’t see these often here in the Bahamas, having spotted them in 2016 and 2018 in the same local island group over the years.

This often happens to me when I freedive for underwater photography… I dive down to look at one thing and then other fish come over to see what’s the excitement in their neighborhood. I have to be ready with the camera at all times, extend my breath-hold until I see stars, and keep a sharp eye on the subject in case I can surface quickly to make another dive.

Smaller still at 3/4”, I came across an imitator blenny on another day. I have seen this on two other occasions in the Bahamas (2019 & 2021). It stayed still long enough for me to get a close approach.

You might be able to recognize that the imitator blenny has a pointed snout and is also in the same genus as rosy, saddled and goldline. The patterns and coloring on all of these cousins are so colorful and uniquely beautiful.

The photography challenge in all of this becomes being able to spot a small, cryptic subject in the camera quickly enough to catch the shot (just like finding warblers in the trees)!!

In both cases, I have to quickly find a visual landmark with my naked eye relative to the bird/blenny and then quickly translate that mental map to the lens view. Underwater can be harder without a viewfinder to get the visual on the back-of-camera LCD, through the housing and in dim light, while floating.

I’ve had a few more memorable experiences underwater lately that are too good not to share:

Cleaning station ~

Swimming back to Reach after a snorkel one day, I found a piece of wood lying in the sand.

There were bar jacks hovering over it and it turned out to be a cleaning station with a tiny (thumbnail sized), juvenile gray angelfish doing the honors.

At the same time, I came across a tobaccofish for the first time, also stopping off for a cleaning from a Pederson cleaning shrimp.

Jawfish conference ~

One day swimming on a patch reef, a very well-camouflaged yellowhead jawfish caught my eye going back into its sand hole. Once I stopped to get a photo of it, I looked up into the water column and saw a forrest of jawfish, all feeding in and out of their holes.

Mating sea slugs ~

I found three lettuce sea slugs on a reef and two were mating. On a nearby reef, a trio of flamingo tongues were doing the same. Must have been the right phase of the moon or something…

There is no doubt more to see and share to come. In the meantime, I’ll continue to work on my photography settings to try new skills.

For example, there is a way to get a black background using a small aperture and strobe, which I was trying out on this brittlestar.

I’ll also have to try my diopter attachment for a super macro mode, using a wet lens on my underwater housing in addition to the macro lens on the camera...