Beautiful Oceans - Border dispute between 2 redlip blennies

This video shows an interesting behavior for teritorial redlip blennies: A redlip blenny feeds on algae within its territory and gets into a territory border dispute with a blenny neighbour. They finally start to pick at each other! Similar to damselfishes, blennies are territorial little fish that defend their little algae garden with quite some energy! Interestingly enough, most blennies lack a swim bladder, the organ that allows fishes to swim and to control their buoyancy. Therefore this little fish, reaching a size of up to 19 cm (7.5 inches) is never seen swimming freely in the water - it rather darts across the coral reef surface, closely watching its neighbors. The behavior in this video has been captured on the Caribbean island of Grenada during a Beautiful Oceans coral reef discovery dive offered by the dive center: Aquanauts Grenada.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• B.OA-203
• territorial
• behaviour
• behavior
• redlip
• blenny
• ophioblennius
• atlanticus
• coral
• reef
• scuba
• diving
• snorkeling

[StephBeautifulOceans]

This video shows an interesting behavior for teritorial redlip blennies: A redlip blenny feeds on algae within its territory and gets into a territory border dispute with a blenny neighbour. They finally start to pick at each other! Click on "more info" on the right hand side to acces more info...