---
title: Banner’s Pipefish (Cosmocampus banneri)
scientific_name: Cosmocampus banneri
common_name: Banner’s Pipefish
taxon: Pipefishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-30T10:04:44.758Z
updated: 2026-08-15T12:48:14.658Z
tags: Banner’s Pipefish, Cosmocampus banneri, Pipefishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/pipefishes/banners-pipefish
---

# Banner’s Pipefish (*Cosmocampus banneri*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Pipefishes (*Syngnathinae*)
- **Size:** up to 6 cm
- **Depth:** 2-30 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Rubble, coral and sponge on shallow reef
- **Reproduction:** Brooder, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- tiny pipefish, barely longer than a matchstick
- pale with reddish blotches and a short blunt snout
- deep in rubble or against sponge, rarely in the open
- length up to 6 cm

Six centimeters (2.4 in) - barely longer than a matchstick and about as thick, lying against sponge or deep in rubble.

Fish this small are found in one of two ways: by somebody working a patch of reef with a torch and a magnifier for an hour, or by rubble being collected and sorted in a laboratory. Both are how the small end of a reef fauna gets described at all, and it is why the species lists of well-studied reefs keep growing without anyone finding anything large.

It eats copepods and amphipods, one at a time, through the family's pipette snout - at this size, a single copepod is a meaningful meal.

The male carries the eggs. In a fish this small the clutch is a dozen or two, which is a reminder of the trade the whole family made: enormous parental care, very few young, and a population that recovers slowly from anything that goes wrong.

## Also known as

- **English:** roughridge pipefish, Banner's Pipefish, Rough-ridge Pipefish
- **Czech:** jehla Bannerova
- **Japanese:** ヒナヨウジ, Hinayoji
- **Chinese:** 斑氏环宇海龙, 斑氏環宇海龍, 海龍
- **AF:** Ruwerif Pypvis

## Scientific synonyms

- *Syngnathus banneri* Herald & Randall, 1972

## Range

Indian Ocean, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/pipefishes/banners-pipefish)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*