Northwest Dive Club

1) we recently saw a mating pair of kelp greenling. The male was twitching out as usual. We were watching them when suddenly the female started spitting out eggs into the water column. What is that about?

This is assuming I have the genders correct: male black, female yellowish

2) how many times per year do kelp greenling mate? We saw them on eggs and mating garb in the spring at Keystone. Now they're laying eggs again (at least at cove2)

Thanks!

Howdy,

According to Milton Love's book, Kelp Greenling produce 28 to 125 thousand eggs per year in three or more batches between July and January. He's not clear about where (geographically) his data come from so the timing may be somewhat different in Puget Sound.

Spewing eggs into the water column seems weird; they're 'supposed' to lay adhesive egg masses onto a solid substrate. Mature males that we've had at the Feiro Center have all been what I would describe as a fairly dark blue with lighter blue spots. I saw one of ours mating a few years ago and his body turned dramatically lighter when the female was present and then reverted to normal when she left the area; only the body color changed - the head stayed the same color. This all happened several times over the course of one afternoon but only resulted in one egg mass (the female was pretty small).

Very interesting observation. I wonder if the Painted greenling you saw was attempting to commence hatching.
I was watching Whitespotted greenling "biting" eggs it was guarding, I did not see spitting, so it might be something completely different.
And I see Painted greenlings in mating colors and guarding eggs almost year around ...

Very awesome Jan!!!
It was really neat to watch those 2 greenlings! I felt like I was invading there privacy but it was so fascinating to see!

Good info!

Jan, maybe you were right. I thought they were mating due to the coloration and all that twitching and the fact they were so close to the eggs. But I zoomed into a picture and sure enough the eggs have eyes, which presumably you can only see later in gestation.

So maybe they were freaking out, bailing out eggs, trying to commence hatching, due to two huge "fish" that were hovering over their nest!

Agreed, the first thing I wondered when reading this post is if you meant to say Painted Greenling as opposed to Kelp Greenling.
Painted Greenling males turn almost completely black with brilliant white spots. The females still retain their reddish bars, but the bars turn more brown when mating. And the male totally 'twitterpates' around the female. But I've never seen the eggs thing, that must have been really cool!
- Janna

My bad!
Painted greenlings, you are correct!
Thanks for the info and correction!

Here's a picture I got from that dive. Those fish were acting so funny! It was cool to watch.

Yup Painted.