PIPEFISH BABIES... NANOCUTENESS

 During the Seahorse Key Coastal Ecosystems Camp, we seined the seagrass many times and pipefish were a common catch.

Long and slender, like a seahorse stretched to its limits, the pipefish is wonderfully adapted to life in the undersea pastures of the  Big Bend Seagrass National Marine Preserve.

Don't be fooled by their "seahorsian" faces, they are voracious predators of all things tasty and tiny in the seagrass.

In the grass, they cling to the blades, and gently sway as the grass does, becoming, for all intents and purposes, just another blade of grass.

... Until tiny fish larvae, or other minuscule things swim close and then they strike with amazing speed.

If  amazing camo, body shape, and great predator skills were all pipefish had, ... that would be awesome enough, 

but  wait ...

This is an adult MALE pipefish with a couple hundred newborn "pipelings" that he has just birthed after being placed in the bucket.


If you are familiar with his close relative the seahorse, you already know that males of these two similar fish species carry the eggs in a ventral pouch until they hatch.


He's not really pregnant, the female produced the eggs, he's just incubating them in a relatively safe place.


During their courtship entanglement, the female laid her eggs in a groove near the pouch where they were fertilized and then sealed inside.

The evolutionary advantage in this strategy is that while he's incubating the current clutch of eggs, the female can get busy producing the next set.

This way, A LOT of baby pipefish enter the dangerous world of the ocean, increasing the odds that at least some of them will reach adulthood.

A tiny 2 day old pipefish.

Nanoperfection.



The adult and his young charges were all released after everyone in the camp had a chance to "ooh" and "awe" over them.

There was a lot of that.

I didn't "ooh", but I'm pretty sure I "awed".