Peek a Boo

A face the size of a fingernail, in a hole the size of a coin.

Blennies live in holes. They back into a gap in the coral or a sponge until only the head shows, and from there they watch everything, with eyes too big for the body and a mouth set in what looks, permanently, like an opinion. The little tufts above the eyes are not eyebrows, though they do the job of eyebrows.

This one lived in an orange sponge on the reef off Turneffe Flats, and the sponge is the picture as much as the fish: a snoot narrowed the strobe to a spot the width of the hole, so the sponge glows around a fish that has decided, for now, not to leave. December 2013, on a camera three generations older than anything on this site. The frame has outlasted the kit.