Do you recognise certain specific critters at your regular underwater haunts ? You may not be imagining it , says Paul Naylor
CRITTERCONFIDENTIAL
Meet Bertram the tompot blenny , photographed at his home in 2020
We ’ re all individuals !
Do you recognise certain specific critters at your regular underwater haunts ? You may not be imagining it , says Paul Naylor
A young Bertram ( on the right ) in 2017 , sneaking in to fertilise some of the eggs being laid by Blanche ( centre ) while territory-holder Bradley ( left ) is preoccupied
Fish are remarkably intelligent [ see Becky Hitchin ’ s lovely piece in SCUBA , September 2023 ] and they are individuals too . Let me introduce Bertram ; he is a tompot blenny and I ’ ve known him for more than seven years . I also refer to him as WBM12 in our study of the blenny communities in two small patches of Devon reef , but ‘ Bertram ’ is much easier to remember . Tompot Bertram .
But … how am I sure he ’ s Bertram ? Is recognising and naming him just an eccentric whim ? As I was excited to discover , individual tompot blennies can be recognised by their unique skin markings , just as zoologists have been doing with land animals such as tigers and larger aquatic creatures ( manta rays , sharks , seals ) for many years .
With tompot blennies , I find the markings around and between the eyes the best to use . They are easy to see when a blenny is peering out of its hole and marks too close to their mouths tend to get obscured by fighting scars . By comparing and cataloguing photographs of individuals , I have been
18 Bertram ( on the left ) in 2018 , now a territory holder with Britney visiting to lay her eggs