A stocky mottled brown goby of rocky shorelines, under stones and along harbor walls, resting on the bottom on a suction disc made from its fused pelvic fins. Up to 12 cm (5 in), and drab enough that nobody photographs it on purpose.
Which makes its address remarkable. This is an Atlantic and Mediterranean fish - it lives from Scotland to 🇸🇳 Senegal and through the Mediterranean and the Black Sea - and it reached this sea by swimming south through the Suez Canal (🇪🇬 Egypt).
That direction is the rare one. Something like a hundred species have gone north through the canal from here into the Mediterranean, a flood large enough to have its own name; the return traffic is a trickle, because Mediterranean water is colder and less salty and the animals adapted to it struggle in the 🌊 Red Sea. A dozen species have managed it. This goby is one of them, alongside the gilt-head seabream.
It spawns under stones: the male clears a cavity, the female sticks eggs to the roof of it, and he guards and fans them until they hatch. It tolerates brackish water and low oxygen better than most reef fish, which is presumably part of how it got here at all.
- stocky brown goby mottled darker, resting on the bottom on fused pelvic fins
- pale orange or white upper edge to the first dorsal fin
- under stones and in crevices on rocky shore rather than on coral
- length up to 12 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats for this species. It has minor commercial value in small-scale fisheries in Italy.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
