A small mottled clinid that props itself on rock and algae in the Galapagos shallows and moves in short darts.
To 13 cm. Greenish-brown and strongly mottled with dark bars and a blackish spot on the gill cover. The identification is the tentacles: a branched one over each eye, and a large bunch of heavily branched tentacles on each side of the nape. Those branching nape tufts are what the species name means and no other Galapagos blenny has them.
Breeding males look like a different fish: overall white with a series of black double bars along the side and bright orange and yellow markings on the gill cover.
It lives on boulder slopes, reefs, ledges and undercuts along wall faces, and on shallow weed-covered rock, between 1 and about 25 m and usually between 6 and 18. It eats crustaceans, molluscs and small fish, and males fight each other hard during the spawning season. It is the most abundant fish of its genus at the Galapagos.
It occurs only at the Galapagos and Malpelo, so it is close to a Galapagos speciality. It was formerly placed in the genus Labrisomus and older guides use that name.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.