Madeira goby
Fish · Last reviewed 2026-08-25
A goby found nowhere on earth except Madeira, the Salvage Islands and the Canaries — and one of the commonest fish in their rockpools.
Catching Madeira goby
Everything here on fishing for it. Each entry opens the page behind it.
- When
- May — months recorded at the places that document it, not a season for the whole range.
- Where
- 1 place FishingHQ documents — strongest claim anywhere: recorded here · From the shore
The distribution line on this fish is three place names long: Madeira, the Salvage Islands and the Canaries. Nothing else. It is about as narrowly endemic as a fish an angler routinely catches can be, and it shares its pools with the rock goby, *Gobius paganellus*, which ranges across northern Europe and is not this.
It is a stout, blunt-headed goby reaching a FishBase maximum of 15 cm — large for a goby — mottled dark brown and grey, with the fused pelvic fins that make a sucker disc on the belly and separate every goby from every blenny at a glance. It sits on the bottom of rockpools and shallow rock rather than swimming, and moves in short darts.
A species-hunting angler took ten of them in a week on Lanzarote, three of them from the rockpools at the end of a pier on his first afternoon, on a drop-shot rig with the weight slid up close to the hook. That is the technique for the whole rockpool fauna and it is worth stating plainly: the rig is not cast, it is lowered, and the weight goes near the hook so the bait can be put into a specific hole rather than dragged past it.
Gobies and blennies are easily confused and easily separated. A goby has two separate dorsal fins and a sucker under the belly; a blenny has one continuous dorsal fin and tentacles over the eyes.
How it is caught
Where Madeira goby is documented
Places where public sources describe this species as fished, with how it is fished and how strongly the evidence supports it. This is not a range map and it is not a recommendation — it is what has been written down about a fishery rather than a record of any individual catch, and being listed is never permission to fish.
Lanzarote
1 documented place
Puerto del Carmen harbour, Lanzarote
Harbour wall
Recorded here
From the shore
Reported May
What these strengths mean
- Recorded here
- At least one credible public account of this species being caught here. That is all it means.
Identification
No photograph of Madeira goby has passed identity review yet, so none is shown. FishingHQ publishes a species photograph only once somebody has confirmed the animal in it against the species record’s own diagnostic features.
- Scientific name
- Mauligobius maderensis
- Family
- Gobiidae
- Water
- Saltwater
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Regions
- Western Europe
- Two separate dorsal fins, and pelvic fins fused into a sucker disc under the belly — which is a goby, not a blenny.
- A blenny by contrast has one continuous dorsal fin and branched tentacles over the eyes, and no sucker.
- Stout, blunt-headed and mottled dark brown and grey, resting on the bottom rather than swimming.
- Large for a rockpool goby: FishBase records a maximum of 15 cm.
- Range is the strongest identifier there is — it occurs only at Madeira, the Salvage Islands and the Canaries.
Size
- Typical
- 7–12 cm
- Large
- 13 cm and over
Exceptional: FishBase records a maximum of 15 cm
Lifecycle and reproduction
Demersal on shallow rock and in rockpools. FishBase gives no depth range for it and describes it as temperate, and its high resilience is what would be expected of a small, fast-maturing rock fish. It is site-faithful, holding to individual pools and crevices.
Not documented on the FishBase record. Gobies generally lay adhesive eggs under a stone or in a shell with male guarding; that family pattern is not asserted here as a fact about this species, and the honest state of its reproductive biology is that it has not been written down.
Feeding and senses
Takes small crustaceans and worms from the floor of pools and shallow rock, in short darts from a resting position. It feeds on the bottom, which is why the presentation that catches it puts the bait on the bottom of a hole rather than suspended in it.
Short-range sight on the bottom of clear, very shallow water. The practical consequence is that a shadow crossing a pool empties it, and an angler who approaches a rockpool low and slowly catches from it while one who walks up to it does not.
Through the year
Resident year-round in the same pools, and it is the tide rather than the season that decides whether they can be fished: the pools that hold them are reachable on the ebb and covered by surge on the flood. An angler planning a rockpool session in the islands is reading a tide table, not a calendar.
Distribution
Eastern Atlantic: Madeira, Salvage and Canary Islands
This is a biological range — where the species occurs, not a prediction that you will catch one. To browse the fishing geography FishingHQ holds, start at fishing places.
Why anglers care
One of the commonest fish in Macaronesian rockpool fishing and an endemic a species hunter travels for. Taken on the smallest scraps of bait and on one-inch soft plastics fished on the bottom of a pool with the drop-shot weight slid close to the hook, on size 10 to 12 hooks. It is not eaten and it is not fought; it is caught because it is there, it is specific to three archipelagos, and a rockpool is where fishing starts for a lot of people.
Handling and returning
Wet hands, crushed barbs, unhook in the water. A goby out of a pool on hot volcanic rock in the middle of a Canarian afternoon has minutes rather than hours.
Where to go next
Similar and related fish
Where it lives
More fish
Not related to this page — just the rest of the section. There is little else joined to this subject yet, and a short page should still lead somewhere.
Sources and evidence
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Family, maximum size, depth range, environment, distribution and the IUCN assessment for Mauligobius maderensis.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species — International Union for Conservation of Nature (Conservation authority)Relied on for: The Least Concern assessment for Mauligobius maderensis, assessed 15 February 2024.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Species hunting adventures on Lanzarote — a four-part shore diary with a full tally — Something Fishy Going On (angling blog), parts also posted to World Sea Fishing, 2014 (Practitioner report)Relied on for: That this species is taken from named public shore marks on Lanzarote, how many were caught across one week in May, and the light-tackle methods and baits that took them.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Why the 4 connections on this page are here, and the sources
Similar and related fish
Backed by research — 1 connection
Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.
Rock goby
Mauligobius maderensis is recorded only from Madeira, the Salvage Islands and the Canaries and reaches 15 cm; Gobius paganellus ranges across northern Europe and the Mediterranean and occurs in the islands too. Two gobies in one pool, and only one of them lives nowhere else.
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: The morphology, size, depth range and distribution that separate these two species from one another.States this directlyPassage read and verified
How it is caught
Reported, not established — 1 connection
Reported, but without independent support. Recorded because it is in circulation, not because it has been shown to hold.
Light rock fishing
Recorded ten times over the week, three of them from rockpools at the end of a pier on the first afternoon, on the smallest scraps of bait fished hard on the bottom with the weight close to the hook.
- Species hunting adventures on Lanzarote — a four-part shore diary with a full tally — Something Fishy Going On (angling blog), parts also posted to World Sea Fishing, 2014 (Practitioner report)Relied on for: The light-tackle methods, rigs, lures, baits and hook sizes a species-hunting angler used on Lanzarote, and the species each took.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Where it lives
Backed by research — 2 connections
Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.
Mudflats and intertidal sandflats
Recorded as demersal and restricted to Madeira, the Salvage Islands and the Canaries. The fish an angler meets are in rockpools and shallow rock, which is the intertidal band.
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Environment, depth range, habitat association and distribution for Mauligobius maderensis.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Rocky shores and reefs
A demersal rock fish of the Macaronesian islands. FishBase gives no depth range for it, so nothing is claimed here beyond the hard-bottom association the record does establish.
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Environment, depth range, habitat association and distribution for Mauligobius maderensis.States this directlyPassage read and verified
How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy.