Banner’s Pipefish
© Rickard Zerpe
Fishes · Bony fishes · Pipefishes

Banner’s Pipefish

Cosmocampus banneri (Herald & Randall, 1972)
syn. Syngnathus banneri
5.8 cm2-30 mLeast Concern
665

Cosmocampus banneri, commonly known as the roughridge pipefish or Banner's pipefish, is a marine species belonging to the family Syngnathidae. This species is distributed from the 🌊 Red Sea and the 🌊 Western Indian Ocean to 🇫🇯 Fiji, the 🇲🇭 Marshall Islands, and the Ryukyu Islands (🇯🇵 Japan). It inhabits coral reef environments at depths ranging from 2 to 30 meters and can attain a length of up to 5.8 cm. While specific information on the feeding habits of C. banneri is limited, it is presumed to consume small crustaceans, akin to other members of the pipefish family. The species exhibits ovoviviparity, with males responsible for carrying eggs in a brood pouch until the young are born live.

The species is named in honor of Albert Henry Banner (1914–1985), an esteemed American carcinologist renowned for his expertise in alpheid shrimps.

Why it's threatened

Residential & commercial development
Housing & urban areas · Commercial & industrial areas · Tourism & recreation areas
Biological resource use
Unintentional effects: (subsistence/small scale) [harvest] · Unintentional effects: (large scale) [harvest]
Pollution
Sewage · Run-off · Nutrient loads · Soil erosion, sedimentation
Climate change & severe weather
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.

Comments

Please, sign in to leave a comment

Continue with a social account — yours will be created automatically.

No comments yet — be the first.

Last Update: June 28, 2026