A dark blunt-headed blenny with red lips, perched on shallow rock and defending a grazing patch.
To about 18 cm. Elongate, compressed and cylindrical. There is a bushy tuft of tentacles above the rear nostrils, a slender tentacle over each eye, and more on the nape. Dark brown with yellowish bars on the head and front of the body, and a dark brown or blackish spot behind the eye. The lateral line runs in two separate overlapping sections.
The fangs are a large curved canine at the back of each side of the lower jaw, with comb-like cutting teeth in a single row at the front. They are for defence and display and are not a hazard to divers.
The sabertooth blenny also has fangs and is easy to separate: that fish is very slender and swims in open water with a brown band along the side and a white belly, where this one is stout, bar-headed and hugs the bottom.
It lives on shallow rocky reef in the surge zone on exposed headlands and steep slopes, wedging into crevices, between the surface and about 20 m. It grazes algae, detritus and small attached animals in daylight, scraping with its comb teeth, and it is territorial, darting out to defend its patch.
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.