I have posted some photos of Western Cleaner Clingfish, Cochleoceps bicolor on iNaturalist. As stated on iNaturalist, this first image shows two Western Cleaner Clingfish on this adult Magpie Perch: –
It is a cropped version of this second image: –
All of the images are of the same Magpie Perch, but these 3rd and 4th images show it swimming past me en route to the cleaning station shown in those first two images, at which time it has a single Western Cleaner Clingfish visible on the left flank: –
(I’m not sure whether it already had another out of sight, e.g. on the right flank or head).
This last image is poor quality but it shows the client fish starting to leave the station because I am getting too close (you can just see a very blurred Western Cleaner Clingfish near the caudal peduncle, for what it is worth): –
This observation is encouraging in the bloom context, as we’d noticed the virtual disappearance of Western Cleaner Clingfish from HAB affected dive sites. Many, like me, had assumed that the Western Cleaner Clingfish had suffered high mortality rates like most reef fish species here in SA. Being so small, few if any dead or dying Western Cleaner Clingfish would wash ashore, they’d be scavenged or decompose before that. So seeing Western Cleaner Clingfish now conveys the impression that such sites are improving, but obviously such a comment is anecdotal. By the way, my BSAC dive buddy, who is very good at finding small critters, saw multiple Clingfish – probably Western Cleaner Clingfish from her description – on some of the leafy brown macroalgae fronds, which I didn’t notice.
I think this is worth noting because there remains a shortage of prominent stations (big sponges and ascidians especially) at this site, so maybe the Western Cleaner Clingfish have temporarily adapted by using relatively prominent algal plants for stations, and may have been visible to my buddy because they were offering her a clean and needed her to see them.