 One of the cutest fish ever – a juvenile in the genus Naso (surgeonfish family) Ned went diving last month in Palau, a destination we had long wanted to visit. I had to change plans at the last minute and stay home with my parents so I missed out on the trip but we are counting Ned’s visit as a recon for a future visit when we can both go. This week on Blenny Watcher we share some of my favorite images from his visit. They range from a speck of an algae shrimp to… a shark! Yes, here on Blennywatcher, a shark photo by Ned DeLoach, but don’t get too excited – he took it with his 60 mm macro lens.
 Humphead Wrasse (Cheilinus undulatus) making a close pass
 Always on the watch for behavior: Bluestriped Cleaner Wrasse clean a Barramundi
 A pelagic ctenophore, captured during an open water night drift dive
 A half-inch Cave Pygmygoby (Trimma taylori)
 And Palau has itty bitty stuff too, like this algae shrimp – the size of a flax seed.
 Arrowhead Soapfish (Belonoperca chabanaudi)
 OK, for the record, a shark picture taken by Ned (but he used his 60mm macro lens)
 Pink Anemonefish (Amphiprion perideraion) laying yellow eggs
 Cephea cephea, Crown Jellyfish, in open water
 A lovely blenny awaiting a name (Malacoctenus n sp. by Dr. Peter Wirtz) Place the winning bid and the right to name this lovely blenny is yours. We are talking about the one-of-a-kind Latinized scientific name; the one by which this fish shall officially be known. Discovered in the Cape Verde Islands and identified as an undescribed species by Dr. Peter Wirtz, the blenny belongs to the genus Malacoctenus, of which only one species was known to live in the Eastern Atlantic. Dr. Wirtz is preparing the formal scientific description but must obtain another specimen to complete the documentation. He is hoping to raise the funding necessary to complete his work by auctioning off the right to name the fish. The auction proceeds will fund the additional travel to the Cape Verde Islands, the field work to obtain another specimen, preparation of the description and its publication.
Funding for science, especially taxonomy, has been increasingly difficult to obtain and auctioning off species names has a number of precedents. For example, in 2007, to raise funding for its Coral Triangle Initiative, Conservation International held a grand event in Monaco to auction naming rights to a number of fishes discovered in Indonesia (see Washington Post article, “New Species Owe Names to Highest Bidder”). German non-profit Biopat offers an online catalog of species awaiting patrons willing to donate funding in return for naming rights (those proceeds are directed to the educational institutions of the discoverers and to field work).
How to name your fish? Dr. Wirtz explains: “You could name the blenny after yourself or after a loved one. When a species is named after a person, the name is given a Latin ending. The ending depends on the gender of the person being honored. For males, the ending is formed by adding the letter “I” and for females by adding the letters “ae.” So if the winning bidder is called John Smith and wants the species named after him, it could be called Malacoctenus johnsmithi.”
The minimum bid is 5,000 US$. If interested in bidding to name the species, contact Dr. Peter Wirtz directly by email via peterwirtz2004@yahoo.com. Dr Wirtz is one of the world’s experts on blennies and has been a helpful resource for our marine life questions. For more information about his books, publications and to view his collection of images, visit his web page at www.medslugs.de/E/Photographers/Peter_Wirtz.htm. The auction ends on December 31, 2013. This could make a wonderful gift for a loved one and at the same time help further science.
 Lucayablennius zingaro. When I first learned the scientific name of the odd little Arrow Blenny my curiosity was piqued. Ned and I were living in Bimini at the time so Lucaya, as in Lucayans, the first inhabitants of the Bahamas, was a familiar term, but I had to look zingaro up in the dictionary. It is Italian for Gypsy and we liked the sound of it and joked if we had another son we would name him Zingaro DeLoach and he would wander the world. This was back in the mid-90s, the pre-online reference days and by the time we got back to the Rosenstiel Library, I had forgotten all about pulling the paper that formally described the Arrow Blenny and in which the origin of the name was documented.
In 2004, we began working with Stan Waterman on the publication of his memoirs, Sea Salt. In the course of reviewing the wonderful collection of photographs from his many adventures, I noticed the name on the back of his boat: Zingaro. This was the purpose-built dive boat that Stan put much sweat into before sailing from Maine to the Bahamas in 1954 where he ran a charter business for several years. He credits that move with changing his life (visit Stanwaterman.com to see just what an amazing life he leads). I made a mental note to ask Stan if there was any connection between the name of his boat and the Arrow Blenny but forgot each time we saw him.  This week, while reviewing video from Utila, including some footage of the Arrow Blenny, I finally remembered to look it up. Through the miracle of online access to archived journals I found the 1957 paper with the original description,
“A Review of the Blenny Genus Chaenopsis, and the Description of a Related New Genus from the Bahamas” by James Böhlke. And there it was in the paper, “..collected by Charles C. G. Chaplin, Stanton Waterman, Edwin Brownrigg and the writer from Sta. 295, about 1/ mile north of the east end of Green Cay, Bahamas:..” and “…collected from Waterman’s boat, the Zingaro, for which the species is named…”
So finally, after almost 20 years, I had my answer.
When I contacted Stan to ask for permission to use his photo, his comment was vintage Waterman: “You will be amused to know that I had thought of naming my boat, the Polyp (in honor of the coral building block). Then I learned it was also a growth in the alimentary canal of humans. I backed off and named the boat Zingaro, which is Gypsy in Italian.” Amused, yes, because Lucayablennius polyp just doesn’t have the same ring to it!
 Seeing the Shorthead Blenny’s eyes rotate backward is one thing – getting the shot was another! And a double take is just what I did when the big round eyes of this Shorthead Blenny rolled onto Ned’s laptop screen. Something wasn’t quite right with the picture so I took a second look and the image fell into place: The tiny blenny’s googly eyes were rotated backwards staring directly behind the fish’s head at Ned’s approaching camera port—a vision of visual dexterity that would make any blenny lover proud.
 Ned was photographing this Shorthead Blenny when he saw its eyes rotate backward. Ned’s preoccupation with backward focused blenny eyes began when he found the Shorthead Blenny (Emblemariopsis bottomei) living within the grooves of a helmet-sized brain coral growing on the side of a large concrete mooring block. I knew Ned was hung up on something. Each time I swam past the block where he was working, his body was contorted, sometimes to extremes; once I saw him standing on his head (well, floating upside down) with his eye still pasted to the viewfinder. However, persistence paid. Three dives and something like four hours later, bingo, everything fell into place.
 Shorthead Blenny, Emblemariopsis bottomei from Bonaire The photo above is a Shorthead Blenny, which we think is a male. A few weeks ago, in our Bonaire Blenny Challenge Week 3, I posted a male in its nuptial colors labeled as Emblemariopsis sp. that Dr. Ben Victor has since identified it as E. bottomei. From Ben: “All the Emblemariopsis in Bonaire are E. bottomei…Females and juveniles with a spike, males without and clear to black.” I’m posting the nuptial male again below, for comparison to how very different it looks from juveniles, females and non-courting males of its species. Thanks to Ned’s photo of the amazing rotating eyes, I spent a lot more time watching these tiny fish during our Bonaire stay.
 Emblemariopsis sp. male in his nuptial colors
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