Salarias fasciatus
Spotted body, big eyes, always on the rocks: find jewelled blennies grazing reef flats in Phuket, Koh Tao and Peninsular Malaysia year-round.
A stocky little fish, rarely more than 9 cm, covered in a dense pattern of pale spots and dark blotches that give it a jewelled look against the reef. Look for the blunt head, high-set eyes and the way it perches motionless on rock or dead coral rather than swimming freely in open water. Fleshy cirri (small tufts) above the eyes break up its outline and help it disappear against algae-covered substrate.
Spend most of a dive parked on a single rock or coral head, grazing algae off the surface in short bursts with quick darting movements. Divers usually find them in the shallows, from the surface down to about 8 metres, sitting still enough that a slow approach gets you a close look before they duck into a crevice. They are territorial over their patch of algae and will chase off rival blennies rather than flee an approaching diver.
Its teeth are fused into a comb-like row built for scraping algae straight off rock and dead coral, which is why you almost always find it grazing rather than hunting.
Comfortable in warm water from roughly 25 to 29 degrees C, so it sits on shallow reef flats and rubble year-round with no clear seasonal pattern in the sightings data.
Reef neighbours a diver could mistake it for. Use the identification notes above to tell them apart.
Most reliably logged across Southeast Asia, with strong numbers in Thailand and Malaysia, particularly Phuket, Koh Tao and the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Also a steady find in Indonesia's Nusa Tenggara and Java, the Philippine Visayas, Queensland in Australia, Fiji's Viti Levu and around Guam and New Caledonia.
Mapping where Jewelled Blenny is logged…
Best chances are in Thailand around Phuket and Koh Tao, and along Malaysia's Peninsular East Coast. It also turns up reliably in Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia's Queensland coast, Fiji and Guam.
There is no strong seasonal pattern. It lives on shallow tropical reefs year-round, comfortable in the 25 to 29 degrees C range typical of these dive regions.
Look for a small, thickset fish under 9 cm covered in a spotted, jewelled pattern, perched still on rock or rubble in shallow water. Fleshy tufts above the eyes and a blunt face help separate it from open-water fish it briefly resembles.
They max out around 9 cm, making them one of the smaller reef fish divers spot deliberately rather than by accident.
It has comb-like teeth adapted purely for scraping algae off rock and dead coral, and it defends its grazing patch aggressively against other blennies while largely ignoring divers.
Site and sighting data is aggregated from diver logs, iNaturalist and GBIF. For taxonomy and conservation status:
Klipfish
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