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 Blenny or shanny |
The common rockpool blenny is alomost perfectly designed for rockpool life. It is small (no point being a big fish in a small pool), well camouflaged, slippery and scaleless and can even breathe out of water as long as its skin stays moist.
At first you might confuse blennies and gobies but a few pointers will help you tell them apart. Blennies have quite a high forehead compared to gobies, and an altogether more alert appearance (gobies can look a bit grumpy). If you can get close enough to see the scales, that immediately sets apart the gobies. Colour can be misleading as both species can be black, but in rock gobies, the top edge of the dorsal fins remains pale, in striking contrast to the rest of the fish. When a blenny goes black, only the corners of the lips stay pale. In their more cryptic colouration, blennies are usually shades or green, whereas gobies use more brown.
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