Potential new species for California: Pacific fanged blenny

[drbill]

Local instructor Ruth Harris had been seeing an unidentified fish in the Casino Point Dive Park. Based on her description I was unable to identify it (no pictures). Last weekend I encountered a fish that I was quite certain was a Pacific fanged (or large banded or horseface) blenny in the shallow rocks. I had observed and filmed them in the Sea of Cortez over a decade ago so I was fairly familiar with them.

I shot some video but the surge made it very difficult to get decent footage so I extracted a few stills. Yesterday I relocated the blenny and took more surge-impacted video but extracted several good stills.

I sent the stills to Dr. Milton Love at UCSB who confirmed my identification. Based on my preliminary research, it may be the first documented record of this species in California waters. Its known geographic distribution was from Guadalupe Island into the Sea of Cortez then down to Peru including Cocos Island and the Galapagos.

I just drafted a new "Dive Dry with Dr. Bill" column that I will publish next week here. Milton and I are going to co-author a paper for the scientific journals about this discovery.

Here are the initial four stills. The column will include better images from yesterday:

 

[Ricardo V.]

drbill,
Thanks for sharing. This is really cool.
I've not had the opportunity to dive the pacific. We have a very similar fish in the Caribbean basin. It's commonly called the red lip blenny.
It likes shallow areas of high surf, and is territorial.
I'm attaching a photo of one I took recently. You probably are familiar with this; in any case, just want to thank you for sharing.
Ricardo

 

[drrich2]

Any thoughts on why it's come north? Are temp.s a bit warmer?

Richard.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Interesting find. Name him "Jack ... Blenny." I'm here all week.

 

[Sam Miller III]

Bravo! Great find !
SAM

 

[shucksun]

Dr. Bill,

Why do the GSB hang out at the Park?

My guesses: A. Good food supply as the cruise ship snorkel tour feedings attract lots of small fish. B. The terrain is somehow magical. (I doubt this as there are many terrain choices on CI.) C. They like the interaction with the divers. (Possible?)

 

[2ndjetty]

This is a very cool find! I wonder if it settled due to the warmer water through the fall...?