SpinyheadPlay freeThe spawning
Many Caribbean corals spawn together once a year, a few nights after a late-summer full moon, an hour or more after dark. The bundles float to the surface, break apart, and the eggs are fertilized there. On this reef the year is compressed: the coral spawns after every full moon.
Spinyhead is a free game you play in your browser: you are a spinyhead blenny, a fish about 3 cm long living in a worm hole on a Caribbean coral head. Feed, fight for a better hole, court, raise eggs and dodge predators, while everything around you behaves the way field biologists have seen it behave. Every behavior in the game is backed by a published study or careful observation; there are 39 on these pages, and more in the game’s field notebook waiting to be found.
Other reef behaviors to discover
