An Ocean Romance

Today’s dive was quite unique as most dives normally tend to be. While cruising around one of my favorite dive sites in search of some squid eggs I had seen a couple of days before, I came across a pair of very animated seaweed blennies (Parablennius marmoreus). These two little fish, no larger than my index finger, were poking in and out of their tiny burrow on the reef and spinning themselves all around.

Amused by their antics I stopped to photograph and video them and within a few seconds I could clearly see what they were all so animated about. Along the walls of their little burrow lay tiny purple eggs no larger than a millimeter in diameter. As the larger of the two Seaweed Blenny spun I caught a glimpse of her releasing her eggs followed by her shaking her body and fanning the area with her pectoral fin. Seconds later the smaller male arose from inside the den beside her.

So intrigued by their work they paid no heed to the underwater camera that hovered within inches of them. In fact, they allowed me to approach close enough to photograph and video the eggs. Some of the eggs appeared to be within different developmental stages of growth. Some had just recently been laid while others I could clearly make out the eyes of the tiny fish fry.

From my many years of diving and exploring our planet’s oceans I have come to learn that there is always something new to discover. No matter if you have been to the same place a hundred times there is always something new that you simply did not see. There is a whole other world evolving around us and no where is this more apparent than beneath the ocean’s waves. Stop and look around, you might be pleasantly surprised by what you might discover.