Bonaire Dive and Adventure

Pygme Goby on Bonaire

Photo by:
Les Wilk

Another distinction for Bonaire's reef fish was documented with photographs in July, 2001 by the Wilk Family. It was the first photographs ever taken of the Pygmy Goby, Lythrypnus minimus, and after receiving their 3rd Edition CD in March of this year, I have been trying to find this rare and difficult to see species. It is not found, or mentioned in Paul Humann/Ned DeLoach's ever popular fish identification field guides for the Caribbean. In fact the only photos are in Wilks' CD. Even a Google search turns up another fish by the same common name, but the species name indicates that they are not the same species, and the other Pygmy Goby is found in the Pacific. Guinness World Record lists a category for the world's smallest species of fish as one found in the fresh water streams of Luzon, in the Pacific and it measures 9.5 mm in length in the adult stage. In trying to visualize the size of Bonaire's Pygmy Goby with something in our everyday world, consider that it is almost exactly the length of one-and-a-half grains of rice.

Today, on a dive with my excellent friend and excellent fish documenter, Candace Platz, I found one and actually was able to show it to her with the aid of my ever handy magnifying glass. This one measures only 11 mm in length and even though the fresh water species tops this one for the Guiness record, it is still known as the smallest fish in the entire Atlantic. On today's documentation, I returned to the site, at 46 feet depth, repeatedly in order to see it out on the open coral head after first disappearing into a tiny hole near a small patch of black encrusting sponge. It was an early morning dive, around 9:30am and the site was along Bonaire's north shoreline, Barcadera, that was still in shadow, a habitat, and time of the day, that I prefer to look for those tiny species that prefer the darker, shadowy, places. Diminutive size means that a fish must use this type of shadowy habitat as an aid in its defense considering that the hungry predators are all bigger than they. With the aid of Candace's flashlight, and my magnifying glass, we were able to see it for 5 or 6 minutes and it appeared quite active during the period of observation.

Description: reddish or brown with tiny white stripes across the back and down each side. These stripes are tiny, about the width of a human hair and appear to be broken, not solid and conspicuous, and impossible to see without magnification. The ReefNet CD describes the stripes as 10 in number behind the pectoral fins and 2 in front, but this only fits the adult male, and not the immatures or the female.

Nothing is known about their ecology: what they eat, how they reproduce or how frequently, and the photos taken by the Wilk family were confirmed to be the first ever taken of this species in its natural habitat. This is to say that museum specimens exist but up until July of 2001, no authentic photos had ever been taken in its natural habitat. For me this makes this species even more of a treasure hunt than ever especially since Les Wilk told me that the photos were taken on Bonaire and I was determined to find it, in the process passing over more common and tiny species, orange-sided goby, Gobiosoma dilepsis, flagfin blenny, Emblemariopsis signifera (Spikefin Blenny in Humanns ID book) and even others that I could not identify. But these species are very common and are 2 to 3 times larger than the Pygmy Goby measuring usually over 1 inch to 1.5 inch. The Pygmy Goby measures .4 inch.

I obviously wish everyone a lot of luck in finding these lilliputians, but what really helps is to study the ReefNet CD (for details see www.reefnet.ca), which has not been distributed to dealers and to dive shops on Bonaire that I am aware of. By the way, the ReefNet CD, especially now that the 3rd Edition is out, is my preferred medium for teaching my FishWatching courses at Bonaire Dive and Adventure. Oh, and start diving with a magnifying glass as standard equipment.