Whoosh Storm Freya and Storm Gareth but no ‘Beast from the East’ this year yet!

I’m still hiding away safely in my crevice home. Phew! Well kind of, it’s still like being in a washing machine down here after Storm Freya and Storm Gareth whizzed through followed by continuing wind and rain. There is a lot of swell and 2 metre waves crashing in on my beach.

Optimistically, I can feel it in the water that 2019 is going to be a good year for us tompot blennies.  Us ‘bourgeois males’ (that’s the way males like me that guard a crevice territory are described) are getting busy. We’re preparing for the spring by clearing any debris from our homes, getting ready to encourage our local ladies in to lay their eggs. It’s an ongoing job at the moment because, as soon as I clear lumps of seaweed out of my home, the swell whooshes them all back in.

I’m really hoping that, this year, we won’t have anything like last year’s ‘Beast from the East’ sweep over and drop the water temperature dramatically.

The seawater temperature is still 9 degrees C and about to turn back up I think. The days are lengthening so spring has sprung!

Tompot blennies egg-laying “Eggscitedly” and “Eggsstaticly!”

I’m “eggscited” and “eggsstatic” now I have a full raft of eggs to look after! That’s because this spring I’ve:

a) secured a territory – my crevice home

b) done my spring cleaning

c) done an “eggscellent” job of attracting the local females in to lay their eggs.

I did this by wafting inviting smells (pheromones) from the enlarged glands just under my belly. Back on 24th March, Belinda was the first female to respond to my smelly message, she came in and had a good look at my home, I gave her a show of my bravado by whizzing round at lightning speed. Once I’d calmed down, she then decided to lay some of her beautiful dark purple eggs with me, which I fertilised immediately. Since then I’ve had visits from Brenda, Barbara, Bertha and Becky too. Belinda has been back twice. I’m very particular where they lay their eggs so you will see in the video that I boss them around to make sure they lay their eggs just where I want them to! They tolerate a little gentle barging and fin nibbling as they know I have a good track record as a Dad; I’ve lived in this crevice for 3 years and have been very successful looking after eggs.

I noticed this year that the females visited us more established males in the better crevices first. Byron and I are the ‘top dogs’ on the reef and we both had a good layer of eggs in our crevices a week or two before the females started to lay eggs with Billy, a small younger male tompot blenny with an inferior crevice home.

 

Tompot blenny power! How to deal with a velvet swimming crab.

This pesky velvet swimming crab keeps creeping into my crevice home when I’m out searching for food. He doesn’t seem to get the message that he isn’t welcome, so I have to deal with him every time I get home. It takes a full blown head on barge, followed by careful manoeuvring to avoid his sharp claws. I then back in beside him and forcibly shove him sideways out of my crevice. As you can see from the video, I’ve nearly succeeded. It’s an uneasy truce for now but I’ll have another bash later!

I use a different technique to shift edible crabs from my territory, please take a look at my blog of 19th June 2015.

 

 

Benny the Blenny is reading his book!

Thank you for reading my blogs, I hope you’ve enjoyed them as much as I’ve loved writing them. There’s always so much happening on my reef to tell you about.

Take a look at this photograph, it shows me looking at the children’s book that is all about ME and my world under the sea. It uses lots of underwater photographs to tell you all about where I live, what I like to eat and what would like to eat me! My eccentric author was very keen that I should see the book so, when the first copies were printed, she brought one down with Paul (the photographer) to show me! I came out of my crevice home to have a good look, swam over it and ……

I’m taking a look at the children’s book that Teresa has written all about me!

I swam out over it – checking for spelling mistakes …..

…. all good so gave it the fins up!

…gave it a big fins up!

Was it the first ever underwater book launch??

My author isn’t brilliant at marketing, so I thought I’d give her a helping fin. Here is the link for my book, Benny the Blenny’s Shallow Sea Adventure https://www.amazon.co.uk/Benny-Blennys-Shallow-Sea-Adventure/dp/1909648000

and Paul’s wonderful book Great British Marine Animals https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-British-Marine-Animals-Naylor/dp/0952283166

 

 

Young tompot with attitude!

Our first big winter storm (called ‘Angus’) would have sent the cuttlefish jetting off to deeper water, thank goodness. The sea has calmed again since then, so Teresa and Paul decided to shore dive and swim out to my reef to see how we are all getting on. They were pleased that, even though it’s looking wintry (some of the big seaweeds have been stripped from the rocks by the power of the waves from the recent storm), there was a tranquil scene. Around my crevice, there was a spiny starfish and several painted top-shells (beautiful pink and cream sea snails) creeping over the vertical rock face; it’s a shame they are just too big for me to eat! Red-eyed velvet swimming crabs, and common prawns with their blue and yellow legs, were tucked into gaps between the rocky ledges. A conger eel and two lobsters were lurking in the deeper, larger crevices. Ballan wrasse were gliding around the thongweed on top of the reef.

Amazingly, the fearless new young tompot blennies were showing off among the rocks; they settled this autumn and are growing fast. The one in the video is now about 4 cm long and, as you can see, is a cool tough dude. That’s my babe, it definitely has attitude!

 

 

Danger! Lurking cuttlefish

Talking of marauding predators, I watched this cuttlefish cautiously from the safety of my crevice home. It grabbed a small fish with its long tentacles and I wondered who had been the unlucky victim. Before the cuttlefish jetted away, I saw a sea scorpion’s tail sticking out from its tentacles. That fish’s camouflage hadn’t deceived the superb vision of the cuttlefish this time, with fatal consequences! Sad to see I guess, but cuttlefish have to eat and better a sea scorpion than a tompot blenny, especially as sea scorpions can eat young tompot blennies too.

What a mouthful! How not to inspect the inside of a conger eel’s mouth!

 

Conger after eating tompot blenny 1605
Small conger eel eating a large tompot blenny!

One of the tompot blennies living on a reef nearby recently came to a grizzly end in the mouth of this young conger eel. I don’t think it would have happened to me because, unlike this poor guy’s home, my crevice has a ‘bolt hole’. Let me explain what I mean by this; an ideal crevice home has a fairly open front part where female tompots can be entertained and encouraged to lay their eggs but it also has a very narrow back part where you can hide when a streamlined predator like a conger eel pays a visit. This ‘bolt hole’ also gives extra shelter when the sea is very rough.

 

Having said all that, this poor tompot blenny was very unlucky to meet a conger eel that was just small enough to get into his home and just large enough to eat him. You can see what a struggle it was for the conger in the first photograph. Paul, my underwater photographer, saw the tompot blenny stuck in the conger’s mouth like that for over 30 minutes! When Paul and Teresa came back 12 hours later, they found a very sleepy full-bellied conger eel and no tompot blenny!

This blog is being posted for children on the Wildlife Trusts Wildlife Watch website.

Wildlife Watch Benny the Blenny’s blog that site also has lots of other fun things to look at too.

The view out of my window – a few weeks ago

The view from my crevice home, the large fish is a balloon wrasse.
The view from my crevice home, the large fish is a ballan wrasse.

For the first few weeks that I was looking after my growing raft of eggs, the view from my crevice home was stunning. I could see all the snakelocks anemones and thongweed gently swaying in the swell and several ballan wrasse (like the large fish in the photo) cruising around looking for crabs.

The egg thief – Connemara clingfish

The eggs survived storm Katie and I’ve had great fun over the last few weeks. Several female tompot blennies have been to visit to lay their eggs in my home crevice as they know I’m a good dad. I was the first of the 4 local males to be looking after eggs and it’s a sure sign that, as soon as one female has laid, others will follow quickly after. They seem to prefer to lay their eggs with a male who already has eggs; going for proven quality and safety in numbers! There’s a small male in the crevice near mine and a generous female eventually laid a few eggs with him, while she laid a lot more with me.

I'm keeping a close eye on this Connemara clingfish!
I’m keeping a close eye on this Connemara clingfish!

I’ve now got eggs on the floor and ceiling and have a lot of egg guarding to do! I was busy at the back of my crevice the other day and a sneaky Connemara clingfish dashed in and ate a few eggs that were near the front entrance to my home. As soon as I spotted the cheeky intruder, I darted over and gave him a quick nip to scare him off. Hopefully it was enough for him think twice before coming to eat my babies again! I have to be careful when I choose my crevice home as these egg thieving clingfish are able to squeeze into narrower gaps between rocks than I can. That means they can hide in parts of my home that give them easy access to my eggs but which I can’t get into to chase them out. Now that is frustrating!

 

It’s hard work being a tompot blenny dad because lots of the reef dwellers are after my precious eggs. First the Connemara clingfish and now a topknot, a flatfish that likes to live on the rock, keeps trying to come in to my crevice. He’s quite big so I have to charge at him and nip at the same time so that he takes notice and goes away.