Cunner

The work of a curious fellow

Cunner, sometime called sea perch, are the most common fish in the Casco Bay. We see them from the size of a thumb up to about 10 inches. They are more consistently curious about the ROV than any of our other subjects. This group showed up a few seconds after we dropped in.

Cunner hang around

Cunner will eat about anything that will fit in their small mouth. Here we see them pulling pieces from some lobster bait. they do this even in the presence of lobsters sometimes.

Cunner at bait

The cunner habit of closely inspecting anything new in the environment has given us some closeup looks at these animals.

Cunner inspect ROV

Cunner do not school for defence as herring do for example but they do tend to congregate near vertical rock faces where the tidal and wave current is reduced. Perhaps it is a matter of minimizing their swimming effort.

Cunner meet at the rock

Cunner mugging for the camera is not an unusual event. This individual can't resist showing off.

Nice fin work Nemo

These guys are actually shoving each other out of the way so they can be in front of the camera.

Cunner hogging the camera