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.
The genus.Cosmocampus Dawson 1979 - kosmos (ornament or decoration) + kampos (mythological sea monster). ETYFish
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
Why it's threatened
Residential & commercial development
Housing & urban areas · Commercial & industrial areas · Tourism & recreation areas
Habitat shifting & alteration · Temperature extremes
Cosmocampus banneri is threatened by ongoing coral reef habitat loss caused by coastal development, pollution, destructive fishing methods such as dynamite and trawling, increasing sea surface temperatures, and ocean acidification (Bruno and Selig 2007, Carpenter et al. 2008). Although these declines are not currently sufficient to warrant a threatened assessment, accelerated climate change could quickly cause declines large enough for the species to become threatened.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
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