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Ornate Ghost Pipefish: Amazing Masters of Camouflage

  • carlgwinn
  • Oct 5
  • 1 min read
Ornate Ghost Pipefish, Solenostomus paradoxus: Female with Egg Pouch
Ornate Ghost Pipefish, Solenostomus paradoxus: Female with Egg Pouch

Ornate Ghost Pipefish are amazing masters of camouflage. This pair was hanging out, snouts down, above a crinoid. Without the full spectrum provided by a strobe, all of the red colors are nearly black, and the pipefish and the crinoid are nearly indistinguishable. The textures of the pipefih are a perfect match. They are extremely hard to spot; again, I have to thank my brilliant dive guide, Jhomel, for pointing me to this pair.

Ghost pipefish are relatives of seahorses and other pipefish, forming the superfamily Syngnathidae. They use their tiny, toothless mouths to suck up mysid shrimp and other tiny prey. Unlike seahorses and other pipefish, the females brood eggs after mating, in a specialized egg pouch, visible in the image above. I thought the female's egg pouch was probably filled with eggs, based on views from multiple angles. In other species of this superfamily, the males take responsibility for the eggs.

The male, shown in the image below, was a good bit smaller than his female companion. This is usually the case for this species.

In both images, the eye is tricky to spot. It's probably easier to see for the female, as a pair of concentric circles against the camouflage background, below where the head starts to narrow. For the male, the inner circle, the pupil, is partly obscured by a bit of white camouflage. (Both male and female have a "false eye", larger and above the actual eye). The male has his mouth open: it's light pink inside.

Ornate Ghost Pipefish Solenostomus paradoxus: Male
Ornate Ghost Pipefish Solenostomus paradoxus: Male

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