brown variable blennies , that I assume are females , getting along famously with a black crevice-guarder .
However , I was once bamboozled to see a bold-stripe individual rush in to join a couple ! When someone at a talk soon afterwards asked me for my favourite recent underwater observation and heard it was ‘ a three-in-a-bed blenny scenario ’, they looked nearly as startled as I had been watching it !
The mystery deepened further when , a few months ago , I watched a single variable blenny for much of a dive . When it was darting around in the open , it had a bold stripe , but when it returned to a hole under a stone it went a more solid brown ! Furthermore , this was in mid-October , well outside what I assumed was the breeding season , so is the stripe some sort of territorial display ?
On a visit to see the variable blennies about a year ago , I had another surprising and wonderful fishy encounter at Firestone . We noticed a few gobies darting around the seabed that gave quite a different impression ( birdwatchers call it ‘ jizz ’) from the usual black , rock and painted gobies that we regularly see there .
The unfamiliar fish were quite photogenic and , after looking through the literature and talking to folk who know more about gobies than me , they were confirmed as Steven ’ s
Typically dark territorial male variable blenny
gobies , Gobius gasteveni . There had been very rare previous sightings in Plymouth Sound but this species is generally described as living offshore , in relatively deep water . It isn ’ t just a Plymouth phenomenon ; they are also now being recorded more at other shallow South Coast sites on Seasearch dives . Have they been overlooked before , which I ’ d find surprising because of their distinctive appearance , or has their distribution and behaviour really changed ? It shows precisely why the Seasearch project is so valuable .
Since that first winter encounter at Firestone , I have seen Steven ’ s gobies on virtually every dive there . In the summer , it looked as though some of them ( assumed to be males from general goby biology ) were guarding and displaying in front of crevices . I had no intention of disturbing one to check what was behind him , but I eventually found an individual with an obligingly open home that allowed me to see and photograph the impressive raft of eggs under his careful custody . Fertile Firestone fish indeed ! �
Steven ’ s goby guarding a raft of pale-yellow eggs
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