#sculpins

Take a closer look at a giant barnicle, and you may find something surprising inside! The grunt sculpin spends most of its time hiding in empty barnacle shells-- so much so that it's evolved specifically to blend in with its surroundings so they're almost invisible to predators.

(Image: A grunt sculpin (Rhamphocottus richardsonii) by Seaside Aquarium)

Woolly Sculpin Clinocottus analis

8/6/2024 Leo Carrillo State Park, California

I don't understand why people only like the dead ones. The alive ones are just as blobby and ugly (affectionate) with a side of bumpy poisonous skin spikes and the extra benefit of being an alive fish! What a lovely critter.

The blobfish, or sculpins, have a lot of adaptations to help them survive at the bottom of the ocean; most notable is the lack of a swim bladder-- an air-filled sack that other fish use to help them swim. Instead, sculpins have a jelly-like layer of fat underneath their skin which makes them slightly less dense than the water around them and allows them to bob along the ocean floor with minimal effort. Turns out being fat and lazy has its advantages!

This is a juvenile silver spotted sculpin, Blepsias cirrhosus. They used to be with the majority of other sculpins in the genus Cottidae, but they’re recently been deemed Quirky and Different. And they’re so fucking cute!!! They have really fun dorsal fins and dark stripes around their eyes. Once again, this is a juvenile; adults are dark brown colored. I assume the color shift is because juveniles grow up in bright green seagrass beds and adults live in brown kelp. 

These little guys are padded sculpins, Artedius fenestralis. You can tell by the cone-like spines near their nostrils, lack of cirri around their eyes, and the scales between their lateral line and dorsal fin (I pet them, I felt the scales.) They are very cute and pretty easy to handle. Like most other sculpins, when you pick them up out of water, they go :o