CRITTERCONFIDENTIAL

Comber in Plymouth Sound

’ m starting 2026 with an assortment of fish that have intrigued or mystified me in recent years. They are species that often seem to go unnoticed, that I rarely see or that are relatively new arrivals.

Gobies are an abundant and varied bunch, with 19 different species found in our waters and around 2,000 worldwide. That means there are plenty of opportunities for surprises and new

Steven’ s goby showing its characteristic pattern of chestnutcoloured patches and stripes

16 observations but, being small and generally inconspicuous, gobies can frequently go under our radar. For example, I had been mystified for a long time by the clouds of gobies that I see on the popular shore dive at Babbacombe in Devon but, often distracted there by higher profile courting cuttlefish and congregating spider crabs, I hadn’ t properly checked them out.

On one dive last summer, I finally got some reasonable photographs of my‘ mystery’ gobies that were darting around, well above the seabed. Being slender and almost transparent, they were clearly( no pun intended) not the familiar two-spotted goby( Pomatoschistus flavescens) that also swims in groups.

Consulting the excellent Seasearch Inshore Fishes guide confirmed them as the aptly named transparent goby( Aphia minuta), which is common but rarely recorded by divers because of its behaviour and appearance. I gather from Seasearch divers that they are most often seen at night.

Meanwhile, across Torbay at Brixham, I saw Steven’ s gobies( Gobius gasteveni) on a shore dive for the first time there last year. Previously thought to be a deepwater species, they have been seen in many shallow locations around southwest England in recent years. Strangely though, I saw fewer in Plymouth Sound in 2025, where I had first spotted them and they seemed to be becoming abundant.