Tag Archives: Tompot blenny

Two Fish in Flushing

Posted on by under eggs, fish, Flushing, rock pooling

Continuing the theme from the two last posts with some ‘topside’ photos of rockpools. We had a very low tide recently which called for some rockpooling on our local shore here in Flushing. We looked (as always) for anything that we could find, but trying to get some ‘close-focus-wide-angle’ pics of fish with the Panasonic Leica 9mm lens was the main aim. Above a Male Tompot guarding eggs (see pic below) as well as a male Connemara Clingfish (no eggs spotted), recognizable by the bright red cheek markings. I have not been underwater very much, but have a bunch of macro photos of snails and stalked jellyfish that I will put on the blog next. (And remember, I post more frequently on instagram: @an_bollenessor!)

a tiny shrimp, not sure which species
The Connemara Clingfish again
Inachus spider crab in a defensive posture!
Tompot Blenny eggs

Fish Portraits

Posted on by under fish, Flushing, Macro, rock pooling

Last weekend the weather was rubbish but the tide was low, and so we went over to our local beach in Flushing for some rock pooling. I did not bring the underwater housing, but just the macro lens and my cygnustech diffuser. Above a little clingfish – this could either be a Two-spotted or a Small-headed Clingfish; they are very hard to tell apart if they are not breeding males (see pic below for scale, I had to use the extra magnification of the Raynox clip-on lens for this one). Below three other fish species: a Tompot Blenny, a Common Blenny (or Shanny) and a Montagu’s Blenny (which is from an earlier post, but I wanted to complete the set here).

Fish of Silver Steps

Posted on by under diving, EMWL, fish, Silver Steps
It is almost February so it is high time for the first 2025 post! I have quite some photos left from last year and I thought a fish photo-dump might be a nice idea. My local shoredive site ‘Silver Steps’ has quite a diversity of fish; however, I have only ever seriously tried to photograph benthic species as the pelagic swimmers are just to difficult to capture, even just for ID purposes. A shame, as I have seen some interesting Seabream species last year (Gilthead Seabream, schools of juveniles that might be Axillary, or Red Seabream and even a Common Two-Banded Seabream) and the wrasse species are very characterful (and I have seen others take great photos of them). Anyway, first up is a Conger Eel (Conger conger) I often visit. Quite menacing, although probably not as big as it looks. I always find it in its lair, probably only coming out at night to hunt (having said that occasionally I do see free-swimming congers during the day). It is always surrounded by big prawns who do not seem to be on the menu somehow, but must be protected from other predators this way.

Below photos of various smaller fish hiding in the rock cracks (click for names on the pictures).

Finally a favourite of mine: the Topknot (Zeugopterus punctatus). Not quite nailed the shot yet – maybe this year!

Variable Blenny

Posted on by under fish

During an otherwise uneventful macro-dive at Silver Steps this week I looked under a small rock overhang around 8 meters deep and noticed an unusual little fish. At first glance it resembled a Tompot Blenny (see pic of a showboating individual below), only darker, more skittish and, upon closer inspection, with much smaller tentacles on top of the head. I knew this must be a Variable (or Ringneck) Blenny, Parablennius pilicornis, as we’d seen many of them on holiday on the Basque coast this summer. It is a southerly species that was first recorded in Britain in 2007 but is increasingly spotted. Not a first for Cornwall, but there are still few observations and so I have recorded it on iNaturalist (making it available for later inclusion on the NBN Atlas, the UK’s largest repository of publicly available biodiversity data). Another warmer water species joining our shores due to climate change…

Back to Silver Steps

Posted on by under diving, eggs, fish, mzuiko60mm, nudibranchs

I recently bought (2ndhand) scuba gear and did a refresher dive; with the nice weather this week it was high time to get back under the waves and take some photos! I dived Thu/Fri/Sat at the main local shoredive site ‘Silver Steps‘. I went in by myself, but with a maximum depth of around 10 meters and good conditions this is not risky. The dives did not disappoint, the viz was excellent! Although I spotted cuttlefish every dive, I still opted for the macro lens, as I suspected I could not get great shots of them with my fisheye lens at 1.5 meter distance (I might have been wrong!). Instead of heading out to sea as some divers do, I always stick to the gullies by the rocks, diving below the kelp to see what happens beneath the rocky overhangs. There are three usual suspects hiding there, each with a very different personality. First, Leopard Spotted Gobies (Thorogobius ephippiatus) inhabit cracks in the rocks and are quite shy:

Second, Tompot Blennies (Parablennius gattorugine) are extremely inquisitive, often coming very close to check out what is going on in front of their domain:

Third, Black-face Blennies (which are not true blennies but triple fins) that only ever live under overhangs, usually head-down. I did not see males in breeding colours (black face, yellow body) but this colour form is even prettier I think:

When inspecting the rock walls carpeted in sponges, seasquirts, algae, worms and other things, I kept my eyes out for nudibranchs. Apart from a tiny crested aeolis, I spotted a good number of Discodoris rosi, busy mating and laying eggs. This species has only been observed in the UK for a decade or so but the population now is booming, with many reports coming in from all over Cornwall:

All in all a great enjoyable three dives! Silvery schools of sandeels and sprat/herring, many wrasse, cuttlefish, small and very big lobsters and a greater pipefish were also spotted. Unfortunately the weather has made a turn for the worse this week, however, there are still a few diveable months left this year…

rockpool photography

Posted on by under Canon G16, eggs, fish, photography, seaweeds

I have been out twice this week with the Canon G16 with the hope of snapping a few good photos (out of the hundreds I take). It was trickier than usual, in part because the viz was not great but also because I am making a bit less progress I feel. Investing in an expensive DSLR + housing will get me further but I do not know if it will be worth the money. However, I still have a lot to do when when it comes to mastering the principles of photography, especially getting to grips with manual settings. In this post I will highlight some of the ‘issues’ am facing; who knows I will be lucky and get some feedback via the blog (and instagram), sharing is caring! As usual, I focussed on the seaweed diversity, although at this time of year it is not the best looking. The photo above is nothing special (the seaweed looks a bit straggly) but I like the blue background. It is interesting the wide diversity of seaweed species on the Red rags in the photo below and I like the contrast of the green sea lettice versus the brown Bushy berry wreck in the second photo but both pics are a bit meh. A main difficulty is that many times the sand (orthe bleached coral weed) contrast with the subject of the photo resulting in excess highlights. I try to counteract this by reducing F-stops (resulting in an overall darker picture) and reduce highlights during post-processing. @chris_exploring recommended to choose overcast rather than sunny days which is probably the best approach (and I will have plenty of opportunities to test this the coming months!) The first pic below of a Two-spotted goby is OK but I could not get quite close enough. The second photo is of course out of focus but I included it anyway to show that some of these photos have great potential. It inspired my own photography rule (the ‘Vos Index’): the beauty of the subject (on a 1-10 scale) times the difficulty of a shot (on a 1-10 scale). We are all trying to score a 100: a perfect capture of a beautiful organism. I am stuck with mediocre captures of beautiful things. Sometimes I get a very good capture but then mostly it is of something not-so beautiful. I shoot JPEG + RAW, which is a bit of a pain as I do not want to clog my hard drive and reviewing and deleting JPEGs and then having to filter for names to delete the associated RAW files is annoying. I actually keep few RAW files because very few photos are worthy of any advanced Photoshop editing, and also the standard Windows photo editing software is not half bad. For example see the photo below of whitebait (impossible to tell if it is herring, sprat or pilchard). It is very low contrast and bluish; by reducing highlights, increasing ‘clarity’ and a bit of cropping the image is completely transformed (although still relatively unusable as the resolution is quite bad).   Finally macro. I just cannot seem to get my strobe to work which is annoying so the pics below are all ambient light. I need to up my game with this as there are so many cool subjects around to shoot if you take time to look. Below some tiny (3-4 mm) snails Rissoa parva. I wanted to zoom in more but was unable to unfortunately. Next a much bigger (2 cm) Netted dog whelk Tritia reticulata (sigh, I knew this as Nassarius reticulatus, and Hinia reticulata but the name has changed again). Next, a baby (3 cm) Tompot blenny Parablennius gattorugine which are one of the easiest fish I know to photograph, not very shy! Finally another challenge to photograph, a mermaids purse (egg case) of a Nursehound Scyliorhinus stellaris shark with a tiny (2-3 cm) embryo visible. I had a little light with me that I used to illuminate it from the back but this could be improved upon as well!

St. Agnes

Posted on by under anemones, Canon G16, crustaceans, fish, rock pooling, seaweeds, snorkeling

I did a little ‘recon’ last Sunday in beautiful St. Agnes on the north coast but my timing was a bit off (the tide came in, with sediment getting suspended and the water becoming super-oxygenated, resulting in lots of bubbles on the wetlens). Luckily, this Thursday with no wind, the sun out and low tide, I had the opportunity to nip out again: awesome! Trevaunance Cove has a small beach, with rock pools on either side, I chose the Trevellas Cove side. Coincidentally, Shoresearch Cornwall (facebook here and here) had a survey and so caught up with Matt and Adele as well as Thomas from HydroMotion Media who I had not seen in a while. The north coast is quite different from the south coast I am used too: more exposed and this site for instance had none of the long Thong weed and Wireweed which dominate Castle Beach. The pools are also wider and in parts have a rocky, gravelly or sandy bottom. One spot had a considerable rock overhang, and I probably spent a full hour alone just at these six meters or so as there was so much to see. With the tide out, it was only about half a meter deep, with rocks encrusted in purple corraline algae, pink and orange sponges, bryozoans, tunicates and red seaweeds. The over-under shot is not particularly great but gives a rough impression, as do the two underwater shots (note the mysis shrimp in the last photo): There is a great diversity in red seaweeds, but I find these species quite hard to ID. The red rags Dilsea carnosa look pretty ‘ragged’ in Falmouth at the moment, but in this shaded, high wave energy spot they looked very fresh (first photo). I made a lot more photos but I was really struggling, as the bright sun reflected on the sand, with the seaweeds sticking out from the shaded overhang, such as Sea beach Delesseria sanguinea. The third photo give a good impression of the beauty of this habitat. Black scour weed and Discoid fork weed manage to scrape around in the shifting sands. Serrated wrack hangs and drips from the rocks into the pools below.Apart from the mysis shrimp in the water column, very large prawns patrol the rock surfaces and Edible crabs, Velvet crabs and Spiny squat lobsters hide in crevices. The prawns are curious and really beautiful. Most spectacularly, I found a large lobster in a cavity and at one point had a small lobster walking over to me: Many fish could be spotted as well: Topknots are common (you can just about see one glued to the rocks behind the lobster in the photo above) and there were a couple of big fat Tompot blennies around as well. Dragonets patrol the sand and are very well camouflaged (and hard to approach). A juvenile fish was hiding on and in a sponge; I first thought it was a juvenile Black-faced blenny Tripterygion delaisi, but in subsequent facebook correspondence thought of a Montagu’s blenny Coryphoblennius galerita (very common here) but then settled on a little Tompot blenny Parablennius gattorugine. This would have been a very good subject for a proper macro-shot if only I could get to grips with my strobe! In general this was a great place and time for fish. Apart from the topknots, tompots and Montagu’s blennies (juveniles were abundant, present even in the tiniest pools), I saw sand eels, corkwing wrasse, a pollack and horse mackerel (both a bit lost in these shallow pools), corkwing wrasse, shannies, sand gobies and rock gobies. I thought I spotted a Giant goby, but this turned out to be a very large rock goby Gobius paganellus (thanks Matt Slater). After the large goby photo, a tiny Rock goby (I think), a Shanny, a Cushion star and Snakelocks anemones. I cannot wait to get back to this beautiful site, but will need to wait a bit for the next good tide…

Practising Fish Photography

Posted on by under Canon G16, fish, rock pooling, snorkeling

This Thursday afternoon was quite bright with low tide still in the ‘OK’ range, however it was quite gusty, resulting in bad viz. As seaweed photography was not an option, I opted to lie down in a midshore rockpool and look at things up close instead. There are a surprising amount of fish in rock pools when you stick your head in and so I chose to have a go photographing them. Most common were Corkwing wrasse, but these are very shy. A pair of Two-spotted gobies Gobiusculus flavenscens hung around a ledge and were easier to photograph. Still tricky though as my standard settings result in limited depth of field; I need to play around with the aperture next time. I will also bring my strobe and videolight to try to bring out the colours more. I tried a split-shot which half-worked but you really need a wide angle dome port for that (not a ‘wet’ wide angle lens). You can see the steps leading from the tunnel entrance to the shore.Two-spotted gobies hover above the substrate instead of lying on it as most other goby species do, but you can see they are very well camouflaged against the corraline algae. Two Tompot blennies Parablennius gattorugine swam up to me. These are the least shy of all the rock pool fish (their cousin the Shanny did not come very close) and easy to photograph as they kept checking me out, striking all kinds of different poses. I need to try to photograph these with my macrolens next time. I turned over a stone and found a Long-spined sea scorpion Taurulus bubalis, these keep very still and are also easy to photograph. Prawns were of course around and are actually really pretty with blue and yellow legs and striped body. Finally a shot of seaweeds in this pool showing fresh growth of many red species and a shot with green Cladophora showing limited visibility due to wave action. Btw, I see this is the 200th post on the blog!

last two dives of the year

Posted on by under Canon Powershot D30, diving, fish, nets

IMG_2041Summer is really over and the water temperatures are down from around 17°C to 13°C. We have not made it to any of the wrecks or rocks off The Lizard and the last set of dives was just of the good old Silver Steps in Falmouth. We had set ourselves some goals though: Chris needed Snakelocks anemones for his student projects and I wanted to catch myself some Leopard-spotted gobies for the aquarium. The Snakelocks were collected quite easily as they are so abundant. For the fish, I had bought a cheap foldable trap. The idea was to set it up in a little overhang housing the gobies, weighing it down with some rocks and come back the next day to take it back out. For bait, I had brought a chickenbone leftover from someones lunch at work. Below, a crappy pick of the trap wedged between rocks and below that a snap of some of the catch the next day (I had a two-piece websuit and in combination with an almost empty tank I was getting too buoyant to take decent photos): IMG_2081IMG_2109Three nosy Tompot blennies and also a small Conger eel; no Leopard-spotted gobies. So at least I know that in principle next year I can try trapping fish, but it might be hard for the gobies as they are very reclusive and do not barge into nets as Tompots do. The first dive, the visibility was OK(ish) and we saw a Cuttlefish Sepia officinalis. Although I have seen them before, you never get tired of them!

IMG_2069 IMG_2074No other special finds. The place was absolutely swarming with Spiny starfish and most Snakelocks seemed to have multiple Leach’s spider crabs underneath them. I saw another Blackfaced blenny. Next year it is high time to dive further and deeper and also to finally get some gobies into the aquarium!IMG_2098

aquarium update 12

Posted on by under anemones, aquarium update, echinoderms, fish, planted aquarium

It has been a while since I last posted an aquarium update; I have been a bit busy and have not done much with the tank recently. I have not done any water changes, never use the skimmer but have had zero algae because I have kept the light level low. I have experimented a bit with various seaweeds but nothing thrived. The Chrysemenia was doing well growing on the Tunze pump but disappeared overnight. Kelp always does well when attached to the pump. The tank is still a bit bare so no ‘full tank shot’ but some inhabitants below. I collected some Parasitic anemones Calliactis parasitica attached to an empty shell figuring that a not so pretty species might be actually quite hardy. Turns out they just stayed a bit limp and I therefore returned them to the sea.IMG_9139The Tompot blenny is a real character, very alert and always hungry. If you stick your finger in the water he immediately comes and nips it. The small scallop remarkably survived over the summer (remarkably because there is almost nothing to filter from the water) but the hungry Tompot ate it in the end (like most other snails). As the snails were not going to last long anyway, I introduced two small Common starfish Asterias rubens and two small Spiny starfish Marthasterias glacialis. They are usually hidden but that makes it extra fun when you spot one. The Cushion star Asterina gibbosa of course remain unperturbed and are always on the prowl. I noticed a tiny offspring (<2 mm).IMG_9759IMG_9391IMG_9752