Bluey the Groper

The Lord Mayor of Clovelly Bay is a transgender legend as playful as a Labrador, social as a butterfly and cunning as the politicians who protect him. Although he's been hooked, speared, scratched and bitten, the rumbling rumours of his death are exaggerated and today you'll find him wearing his scars with pride, as though aware of his status as icon, state symbol, source of government funding, groundbreaking scientific research and community pride. Yet for all his global fame - the pin-up status with kids, shrinks, snorkellers and greenies - he remains a people's hero.

Not bad for a blue-hued, metre-long slab of scales, fins and scars.

But the restless tide of Harbour City infamy tells us Bluey the Groper is no mere fish. Since at least the 60s he has been nipping the toes of swimmers on stormy days in affable greeting, tilting his body up to make direct eye contact and smiling that fat-lipped and strangely conspiratorial grin. Bluey's anointing as official fish of NSW confirmed him as the most charming achoerodus viridis on the planet. "Such a conspicuous and friendly fish," remarks Dr Jeff Leis of Sydney's Australian Museum of Bluey. "A metre long and swims right up to you like a puppy, allowing you to stroke him."

Of the 1600 species of bony fish found in NSW waters less than 20 per cent have been identified. Of those, Blue Gropers are perhaps the most beloved identifiable and yet the most mysterious. Fat as a hog, smart as a whip and friendly as a hound on heat, Bluey's kind can get to 1.2 metres long and live for 50 years, changing their sex at will if needed. Yet only in the last couple of years has a scientific team led by Dr Leis discovered what groper larvae even look like.

Eastern gropers are found from Wilson's Promontory in Victoria right up to Hervey Bay in Queensland and they begin life as 2mm eggs that float out to sea and hatch within the day then feed in sea grasses, estuaries and rocky outcrops. As they grow older they go deeper, making reefs 70 metres down their home. When their sexes diverge, females turn a reddish brown and males go a moon blue with a starburst of orange lines radiating from the eyes. Sydney has long been a happy home for this most charismatic of sea beasts.

Bluey's first public appearance at Clovelly was in the 1960s but his kin is thought to have dwelt there for centuries. "The first of the famous Blueys was 'Old Blue' and he swam in the bailiwick between the point and Tom Caddy's steps, feeding on sea urchins," recalls Clovelly Eskimos member John McNamee. "He was half-domesticated and losing his vivid blue lustre with age like the rest of us but he was still wild, which a few of us found out when we dived on top of him."

Bluey was anonymous back then, known only to a few barnacle-crusted locals who swam at Cloey year-round and who'd bang two rocks together as dinner bell and then slip him boiled eggs and beachworms. Alas, an inquisitive nature is a dangerous trait in a fish. As his fame grew so did the crowds who came to see him. Twice in the last seven years Bluey has been feared killed at the hands of spear fisherman. Always though he has returned, leading some to dub him: "The fish that cannot die".

That perhaps is the key to Bluey's fame - he exists almost in the realm of myth. If his fame hadn't spread to the four corners of the world, you'd place him in the tall tales but true pantheon where dolphins tow the shipwrecked to shore, and killer whales help whalers herd and hunt humpbacks as they did off Eden in southern NSW in the 30s.

But Bluey is real and accessible, a source of wild magic in a world yoked by cold reality. "Most divers have the philosophy that you bring nothing to the underwater world but your bubbles," says John Rowe, the famous fish's quasi guardian. "But to be in eye-to-eye contact with Bluey, so sensitive a new age groper, is to balance the threat of a wild animal with complete wonder."

Never has a fish won so much adulation among fish and humans and affected such legislative change as Bluey. "I was in Venice and a friend called me from Ireland to say he'd heard Bluey was dead," recalls Rowe. 

As a direct result of the assassination attempts, then-premier Bob Carr (a Clovelly regular) in 2002 declared the Bronte-Coogee coast a protected aquatic reserve with spear fishing banned in Bluey's precinct between Clovelly and Gordon's Bay.

Today, Bluey exists as a peculiarly Sydney phenomenon (and not just because he began life as a female and switched teams half-way). He is where myth, legend, lore and fact scatter like whitebait at a shark-shaped shadow.

So long as there are Sydneysiders diving and splashing in Clovelly Bay, Bluey will lurk nearby. Waiting. Watching. Smiling.

Lifeline

1961 Blue groper begins interacting with swimmers at Clovelly
1969 Gropers become totally protected species in NSW waters
1980 Gropers banned from commercial fishing and sale
1996 Eastern groper made offi cial fish of NSW
2002 Bluey believed killed by scuba divers. NSW government offers $1000 reward for capture of his assassin. They join with Waverley and Randwick councils in declaring Bluey's territory an aquatic reserve with extra levels of protection
2004 Bluey on Wheels educational units hit the road to schools state-wide
2005 Bluey again feared killed by spear fishermen. Two days later a 10-year-old leaps from the water with a small cut on his brow, yelling: "Bluey bit me!"
2007 Bluey tagged with state-of-the-art acoustic transmitter to chart his movements every 1-3 minutes

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