Saliaras Blennies in the Wild

 Blennies of the genus Saliaras are well known in the hobby for their excellent grazing and algae eating abilities, but do we know a lot about their natural habitat and behaviour? I thought I’d offer my observations.  On a recent trip to the Indian Ocean, whilst many of my fellow holiday makers were basking in the sun, I (like the proud geek I am) spent a great deal of time snorkelling and wading around in the shallows and mangroves as well as donning my scuba gear for some more serious reef exploration. One of my favourite spots for some serious hands-on investigation was a small area of ocean-rounded volcanic rocks that were partly exposed to the air at low tide and covered by around twelve inches of water at high tide.  The rocks were treacherously slippy with algae and difficult to walk on, but the algae offered some wonderful opportunities for grazing animals and a type of habitat – i.e a tidal tropical rocky shore, that I suspect many hobbyists are entirely unfamiliar with. The first creatires I noticed were hundreds of small hermits, that like many hermit species are more commonly seen in these habitats than at depth, along with urchins and what i’ll call Money Cowries though I’m a long way off identifying them to a species level, but then my eye was caught by several fish that ‘mud skipper like’ were resting on the rocks. As I looked further I realised they were Saliaras blennies and they were using small waves to ‘surf’ onto the tops of rocks to steal a few mouthfulls of algae and would stay for several minutes before a flick of the tail or another wave would wash them back into the water.  My best sighting though, was the fish spotted at the top of this piece, that had taken up residence in a hole bored into the rock by some sort of boring bivalve and was quite happy to sit in this tiny ‘burrow’ free from predation in the water – I’d seen a Peppered Moray hunting a few feet away earlier! Now I’d never considered that Salarias blennies would be adapted to spend any time whatsoever out of the water, but it seems from this brief encounter this is qute normal behaviour?  Exploring the shore further, revealed the fish were common in this habitat and were grazing the rocks at all tidal ranges along with larger reef fish, including Moorish Idols, that were frequently seen in several feet of water. So, not an entirely exhaustive study of Saliaras behaviour but interesting none the less.