We'll continue today with the tiny little reef fish. Like yesterday's Goldspot Goby, if you slow down and pay attention, these diminutive fish are quite numerous just about everywhere you look on the reef.

At first, I thought today's fish was a Secretary Blenny (Acanthemblemaria maria), but after looking more closely, I'm not so sure. It is definitely in the Blenny family (Acanthemblemaria spp.), but it is lacking the yellow irises and white bar behind the eyes that the Secretary Blennies possess.

Regardless, the behavior is the same - each seems to live in the holes in corals and sponges that are left by various worms. They usually sit in these holes with just their heads protruding, until a morsel of food drifts by, then they dart out, grab the food, and then return to their hole with lightning speed.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/120th sec at f/16. Image Stabilization on. ISO 100. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in TTL Mode. Raw conversion in Photoshop CS5.

Looking at the EXIF data, this shot was taken at the lens' minimum focusing distance, which produces a 1:1 magnification. That means that the image is 22.3mm x 14.9mm, which makes that fish pretty darn tiny.

Just another treasure of the reef if you know where to look.

- Bill