Half a meter (21 in) of blenny shaped like an eel, standing vertically out of a burrow in the sand and swaying with the water. Nothing about it reads as a blenny, which is why the few divers who see one report a small moray.
It lives in a vertical shaft in soft bottom, which is unusual enough among blennies to be almost unique, and it comes out at night to hunt small fish and crustaceans in open water. The elongation and the fin that runs the whole length of the body are the equipment for swimming in that eel-like way.
It has also turned up at absurd depths - the records reach past a thousand meters, which for a coral reef family is remarkable and probably reflects how little anyone has looked.
Rare in sightings and probably not rare in fact: a thin brown animal that spends the day underground on a silty flat is not something a reef diver would ever find.
The species. Xiphasia setifer Swainson 1839 - seti (setae) + fero (to bear). ETYFish
- extremely long eel-like body, up to half a meter, unlike any other blenny
- pale brown with faint bars and a long low dorsal fin the whole body length
- stands vertically out of a burrow in sand, swaying
- length up to 53 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
