---
title: Nalolo blenny (Ecsenius nalolo)
scientific_name: Ecsenius nalolo
common_name: Nalolo blenny
taxon: Combtooth blenny
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-03-22T00:18:38.163Z
updated: 2026-08-18T07:28:52.360Z
tags: Nalolo blenny, Ecsenius nalolo, Combtooth blenny, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/nalolo-blenny
---

# Nalolo blenny (*Ecsenius nalolo*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Combtooth blenny (*Blenniidae*)
- **Size:** 6.5 cm
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Coral and rock on shallow reef, perched in the open
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- small blunt-headed fish propped upright on its pelvic fins
- body pale to olive with a dark line low on the flank
- moves in short hops from one perch to the next, never hovering
- up to 6.5 cm

Blenny comes from the Greek for slime, and the name is the description. These fish have no scales at all: the body is bare skin under a heavy coat of mucus, which is why a blenny in the hand is impossible to hold and why an empty hole that has had one in it feels greasy.

The other missing part is the swim bladder. Almost every reef fish carries a gas bladder that lets it hang in midwater without effort. A blenny has none, so it cannot hover, and everything about how it moves follows from that: it sits, propped upright on its pelvic fins like a small tripod, and when it wants to be somewhere else it hops, in a short burst that ends with it perched again. A blenny caught in open water is a blenny in trouble.

What it gains is a life in places a neutrally buoyant fish cannot use. Surge, tide pools, the underside of ledges, holes the width of a pencil: a fish that sinks when it stops swimming is at home in all of them.

This one is a common shallow-water grazer, scraping the film of algae and detritus off rock with a comb of fine teeth set in the lip.

## Also known as

- **English:** nalolo, Nalolo Blenny
- **French:** Blennie nalolo
- **Czech:** slizoun nalolo

## Range

Comoros, Eritrea, Indian Ocean, Mozambique, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/nalolo-blenny)*
*Updated: August 18, 2026*