Bubbles from the Naturalist Jerry's tank - by Jerry Ligon

October 2005: Back on Bari Reef after a few years absence...

In August, 2005, I rediscovered two species that were present on Bari back in the days before the surge from hurricane Lenny took out our dive pier, dive shop and the adjoining Green Parrot restaurant. This happened in November of 1999.
The two species, Tesselated Blenny and Molly Miller, lived along the huge pipes (pilings) that served as support for our dive pier and they occupied the abandoned barnacles and other small holes along the metal pipe in very shallow water usually less than 4 feet.
Bonaire Dive and Adventure's new pier was officially opened in August of 2003, and like the old pier, it also had large metal pilings that supported the pier where barnacles could grow. The blennies will not occupy a barnacle shell as long as the original owner is still alive and at home. They are patient and show good manners. They obviously waited until the barnacles grew old and died, which took a few years. Then, with their shelters abandoned, a "vacancy" sign was apparent for the small blennies.
Tesselated Blenny, 2.5 inches in length, is seen on fish surveys on Bonaire at a sighting frequency of .04 % and Molly Miller, around 3 to 4 inches long, has a sighting frequency of 1.7 % meaning that both of these are quite uncommon on Bonaire, so the discovery on Bari is a significant finding.
Almost all members of the blenny family of small, elongated bottom dwellers must wait for the maturation and death of the tunnel makers on the reef so they will have a protective shelter. For example, Christmas Tree Worms create a shelter from which to extend their feeding arms that we recognize as the characteristic "Christmas tree" shape. As corals grow they extend their surface over the tubes of the worms and cover everything except the opening from which the feeding arms can extend to capture food floating by over the reef. Neighboring Secretary Blennies will fight over a newly deserted Christmas Tree tunnel, usually after the death of the resident and often change their shelter sites for better ones as they become available.
Another source of blenny shelters also depends upon the death of individual coral polyps of a species of coral known as Giant Boulder Coral. These individual coral polyps are the largest of all the corals and are the perfect size for a blenny looking for a nice protective tube in which to live. There is a colony of Medusa Blenny on Bari that I have also found this summer and that are also quite rare and it so happens that they are occupying an old coral head of Giant Boulder Coral in about 3 feet of water.
This information, if used properly, leads to a naturalist being able to depend on finding an uncommon species in the exact place where it was first discovered because blennies are not adventure-some nor do they have an exploratory nature away from the protection of their recycled tunnels, thus assuring a good species list on a fish survey after a few dives discovering where individual species live.

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