A tube blenny endemic to the archipelago, living in an empty barnacle or worm hole with only the head showing.
To about 4 cm. A row of brown blotches along the midline of the body with two more on the cheek, and the identifying feature is the lower jaw: yellow-orange at the front and reddish purple at the rear, with an orange or yellow inner ring to the iris. The top of the head behind the eyes is covered in short spines. Breeding males turn black except for the orange lower jaw and the cheek spot, which is worth knowing because a black tube blenny here is not a different species. No other Acanthemblemaria is recorded from the archipelago, so there is nothing to separate it from locally.
It lives in an empty barnacle test or worm tube on rock in the top ten metres, with only the head showing, darting out to take passing zooplankton, small crustaceans and fish eggs and reversing straight back in. Approach it slowly and from below the hole rather than above it. Recorded only from these islands. Described in 1999. Listed as Vulnerable. FishBase gives a depth of 31 metres which no other source supports.
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.