Denise Pygme Seahorse

Description:

Small, up to 1.5 cm (fully stretched out), usually looks less than 1 cm as their tail is coiled up among the branches of the host sea fan they lives in. They have amazing camouflage, some will even have tubercles that makes them looks like the branches of sea fan with polyps. They are mostly orange in colour with some variation of reddish with white spots, all depending on the host seafan. Pic#1 is the 'larger' picture of what most Diver is likely to 'look at', whereby the Pygmy seahorse is really tiny. Puc#3 is a cropped of Pic#2 to show more details of the tiny cutie.

Habitat:

They are usually solitary, though they may be found in pairs or small groups on their host gorgonians, usually colonies of Annella reticulata, Muricella or Echinogorgia, in depths of up to 84m.

Notes:

Like all seahorses, it is the Males that carries the Eggs in his pouch. During courting/mating, the Female will deposit her Eggs into the pouch of the Males where the Eggs will be fertilized. The Males will look after the Eggs and during this period, the Females will 'visits' the Males every day, usually at dawn and they will perform 'courtship dance', after which, the Female will move away to another part of the Gorgonian Seafan. The Male will give birth to the babies, a few at a time, by squeezing his pouch and watching the new babies either float away to settle down in other Seafans or the same Seafan.