Photo of the Week: December 2009 Week 5

Hi Gang!

For this week’s POTW I went into my archives to find a picture I acquired earlier this year during a trip to Hawaii. The image is a picture of the face of a fish known to icthyologists as Exallias brevis and to laymen by a handful of common names including the short-bodied blenny, leopard blenny, honeycomb blenny, spotted blenny and sailfin blenny. I think it should be called the adorable blenny, but the last thing this fish needs is another common name. Things are confusing enough as is!

The short-bodied blenny is a three-to-five inch long, bottom dwelling, scaleless species that has a relatively large head compared to its overall body size. It has large, bulbous eyes that are set high up on the head, and a mouth filled with comb-like teeth. In terms of its physical appearance, the short-bodied blenny bears some resemblance to boxing promoter Don King, or at least their hairstyles are similar, as the fish has a fringe of cirri that stands up on its head between its eyes.

Another fringe of cirri extends downward from the fish’s lower lip. The pectoral fins are broad and rounded, a design that enables the short-bodied blenny to prop itself up on its fins when the fish is resting on the substrate.

The specimen featured in this week’s POTW is a male. Some spots on males are red-to-orange, while all the spots are brown in females and juveniles.

To the casual observer the short-bodied blenny can appear to be a fish that is torn between being curious and being wary. When a short-bodied blenny spots a diver it often approaches by swimming to a vantage point where it can get a closer look, but the same fish is usually very quick to re-position itself before settling down to take another look. But before you can really say the fish is at rest it’s off to yet another vantage point, and after only a few moves the fish often ducks for cover. However, with a bit of good luck and some patience it is possible to get a short-bodied blenny to sit still long enough to get a nice photograph or two.

The range of the short-bodied blenny extends from Hawaii southward to central Polynesia. Westward through Micronesia and Melanesia. through the West Indies and into the Indian Ocean all the way to Ceylon. According to the literature, the short-bodied blenny is usually found in coral reef communities at depths between 10 and 35 feet, but I captured this portrait at a depth of 55 feet on a dive in Kona. The short-bodied blenny feeds almost exclusively on a variety of small stony corals.

I hope you enjoy this week’s POTW and that you have learned a little about the natural history one of Hawaii’s reef fishes.

See you next week!

Marty