Common Name: Brown Sabretooth Blenny

Distribution: Common in the Solitary Islands Marine Park. Distributed throughout the Western Pacific region: Australia and New Caledonia. In Australia recorded from Central Queensland south to southern New South Wales and including Lord Howe Island.

Ecological Notes: Typically found in quiet coastal bays and estuaries or vegetated rocky reef. Often found inside bottles, pipe or cans. Depth 1 – 10 m.

Additional Notes: Series of dark blotches with scattered fine blueish spots along back, pale or yellow belly. Often hide in seagrasses, sea weeds or empty mollusc shells, fish pictured in top photograph was living in the bottle at bottom right of picture. Note elongated first dorsal fin ray of male. Lower photograph shows courting couple with female in foreground. Females lay eggs on inner surface of dead bivalve shells where they are guarded by the male. Larvae are planktonic. Grows to 13 cm.

References: R. Stuart-Smith, G. Edgar, A. Green, I. Shaw, Tropical Marine Fishes of Australia. Reed New Holland Publishers, 2015. p.377.

Atlas of Living Australia website at https://bie.ala.org.au/search?q=petroscirtes+lupus. Accessed 01/07/18.

FishBase. Froese, R. and D. Pauly. Editors. 2018. World Wide Web electronic publication. https://fishbase.ca/summary/Petroscirtes-lupus.html. Accessed 01/07/18.