Montagu's blenny
Fish · Last reviewed 2026-08-25
A tiny rockpool blenny with a fringed crest across the top of its head, living in the highest and hottest pools on the shore.
Catching Montagu's blenny
Everything here on fishing for it. Each entry opens the page behind it.
- When
- Mar — 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
Montagu's blenny is the small fringed one, and it lives higher up the shore than almost anything else with fins.
It is a very small blenny — FishBase records a maximum of 7.6 cm — with a blunt head carrying a distinctive transverse crest of fringed tentacles across the crown, and a body that is olive to brown with pale spots and, on males, blue-white flecks along the flank. The Azores checklist's Portuguese name goes straight to the point: `caboz de crista`, the crested blenny.
Its habitat is what separates it from the other rockpool blennies. It favours the upper shore — shallow, warm, high-level pools that empty and refill, and where salinity and temperature swing violently between tides — and it feeds substantially on barnacles, biting the feeding legs off them as they extend. A fish whose diet is the tips of barnacle limbs is a fish adapted to a pool nothing else wants.
FishBase records it from western England and the Channel through Spain, Portugal, France and Morocco to Madeira and the Canaries, and through the Mediterranean, the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. The Azores checklist records it there too.
For an angler it is a rockpool-fishing and species-hunting capture: the smallest hooks tied, a fragment of bait, and a bait lowered rather than cast — the same technique the rockpool blenny is taken on, in pools slightly higher up the same rock.
Where Montagu's blenny 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.
The Azores
1 documented place
Vila Franca do Campo, São Miguel
Harbour wall
Recorded here
From the shore
Reported Mar
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 Montagu's blenny 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
- Coryphoblennius galerita
- Family
- Blenniidae
- Water
- Saltwater
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Regions
- Western Europe, Britain & Ireland, Mediterranean, North Africa
- A transverse crest of fringed tentacles running ACROSS the top of the head, rather than the paired tentacles above each eye that most blennies carry.
- Very small: FishBase records a maximum of 7.6 cm, which is smaller than the rockpool blennies it shares shore with.
- Olive to dark brown with pale spots, and blue-white flecks along the flank on males.
- A blunt, steep-fronted head on a short body.
- Found in high-level pools on the upper shore, higher than most rockpool fish tolerate.
Size
- Typical
- 3–6 cm
- Large
- 7 cm and over
Exceptional: FishBase records a maximum of 7.6 cm
Lifecycle and reproduction
Demersal on the upper shore, in high-level rockpools and the crevices around them, where temperature and salinity vary sharply between tides. High resilience. Site-attached to individual pools.
Not detailed on the FishBase record. Blenniid nest-guarding in a crevice or under a stone is the family pattern and is not asserted here as established for this species.
Feeding and senses
Takes small crustaceans and, distinctively, feeds on barnacles by biting off the cirri — the feeding legs — as they are extended into the water. A diet of barnacle limbs is what makes a high, hot, otherwise unproductive pool worth living in.
Very short-range vision in shallow, bright, moving water, combined with strong territorial response. A bait entering its pool is investigated within seconds whether or not the fish is hungry.
Through the year
Resident year-round in the same pools. Access is a matter of the tide rather than the season, and its pools are reachable for longer than the lower-shore ones because they sit higher.
Distribution
Eastern Atlantic: along the coasts of western England and the British Channel, Spain, Portugal, France, Morocco, Madeira , Canary Islands; Mediterranean Sea, Sea of Marmara, and the Black Sea
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
A rockpool and species-hunting capture across an unusually wide range — the same fish is available in a Cornish pool, a Portuguese one, an Azorean one and a Black Sea one. Taken on the smallest hooks tied and a fragment of bait lowered into a pool rather than cast. Of no food value, and one of the fish that makes a rockpool a place to fish rather than a place to walk past.
Handling and returning
A fish of a few centimetres in a pool that may be considerably warmer than the sea. Unhook in the water, handle wet or not at all, and return it to the pool it came from rather than to the sea below.
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 Coryphoblennius galerita.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 Coryphoblennius galerita, assessed 13 November 2007.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Marine fishes of the Azores: an annotated checklist and bibliography — Santos, Porteiro & Barreiros — Arquipélago, Life and Marine Sciences, Supplement 1, University of the Azores, 1997 (Scientific literature)Relied on for: That this species is recorded from the Azores, and the Portuguese and Azorean vernacular names the checklist gives it.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 — 2 connections
Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.
Rockpool blenny
Coryphoblennius galerita carries a transverse crest of fringed tentacles ACROSS the crown and reaches 7.6 cm; Parablennius parvicornis carries paired tentacles above each eye and reaches 12 cm. The first favours high-level upper-shore pools and eats barnacle cirri; the second is a fish of the lower pools and the surge zone.
- 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
Shanny
Coryphoblennius galerita has a fringed transverse crest across the top of the head; Lipophrys pholis has no head tentacles at all, which is unusual among the blennies and is its own identifying character. Both occur on western English and Channel shores, and both are what a child catches in a pool.
- 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
Taken at Vila Franca do Campo in March on the smallest hooks. It lives in upper-shore pools, so the technique is the rockpool one — the weight moved up close to the hook so a fragment can be dropped into a specific hole.
- Species hunting adventures on São Miguel — a two-part March diary at named marks — Something Fishy Going On (angling blog), 2022 (Practitioner report)Relied on for: The light-tackle methods, rigs, hooks and baits a species-hunting angler used on São Miguel in March, and the species each took.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Where it lives
Backed by research — 1 connection
Supported by peer-reviewed research or fisheries science. The sources are listed and can be checked.
Mudflats and intertidal sandflats
FishBase records Coryphoblennius galerita as demersal from western England and the Channel to Madeira and the Canaries and through the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and the Azores annotated checklist records it from that archipelago as `caboz de crista`. It occupies high-level pools where temperature and salinity swing between tides, and feeds substantially on barnacle cirri — a diet that makes a pool nothing else wants worth living in.
- Marine fishes of the Azores: an annotated checklist and bibliography — Santos, Porteiro & Barreiros — Arquipélago, Life and Marine Sciences, Supplement 1, University of the Azores, 1997 (Scientific literature)Relied on for: Which species are recorded from the Azores, their Portuguese and Azorean vernacular names, and the published synonyms and misidentifications for each.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- 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 species from one another.States this directlyPassage read and verified
How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy.