---
title: Samoan Pipefish (Halicampus mataafae)
scientific_name: Halicampus mataafae
common_name: Samoan Pipefish
taxon: Pipefishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-30T10:15:15.313Z
updated: 2026-08-15T11:19:39.760Z
tags: Samoan Pipefish, Halicampus mataafae, Pipefishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/pipefishes/samoan-pipefish
---

# Samoan Pipefish (*Halicampus mataafae*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Pipefishes (*Syngnathinae*)
- **Size:** up to 14 cm
- **Depth:** 0-15 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Shallow rubble, weed and reef flats
- **Reproduction:** Brooder, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- mottled brown and cream body with irregular pale saddles
- short snout, small skin flaps along the body
- lies among rubble rather than swimming above it
- length up to 14 cm

A mottled pipefish lying among rubble in very shallow water, fourteen centimeters (5.5 in), and one that almost nobody notices because it is doing nothing at all.

Most small fish hide by getting into something. This one hides by being a stick lying on the bottom: it rests on the rubble rather than hovering above it, has irregular pale saddles that break the line of the body, and carries small flaps of skin that blur its outline further. Movement is what gives an animal away, and this one has largely given it up.

That is also why the family is so poorly recorded. A fish that does not move, lives in shallow rubble and is the color of the bottom is systematically under-reported - the pipefishes of any coast are always more numerous than the records suggest.

The male carries the eggs, glued to a strip on the underside of his tail with no pouch over them - the simpler arrangement in the family, and the one closer to how the whole system probably began.

## Also known as

- **English:** Samoan Pipefish, Brown pipefish
- **Japanese:** チャバナウミヤッコ, Chabanaumiyakko
- **Chinese:** 褐海蠋魚, 褐海蠋鱼, 馬他小頜海龍
- **AF:** Bruin Pypvis
- **MAH:** Hilitasi-tasi

## Scientific synonyms

- *Corythoichthys mataafae* Jordan & Seale, 1906
- *Corythroichthys mataafae* Jordan & Seale, 1906
- *Halicampus mataafe* (Jordan & Seale, 1906)
- *Micrognathus mataafae* (Jordan & Seale, 1906)

## Range

Indian Ocean, Mozambique, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa

---

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