Ten centimeters (4 in) of small pale pipefish lying among weed and rubble, and one of the animals in this catalogue about which almost nothing is known.
That is not unusual for the group. Pipefishes are small, still, cryptic and hard to identify - separating species often needs counts of the bony rings along the body and the tail - so the literature for many of them consists of a description, a few museum specimens and a distribution map. Behavior, diet and breeding are extrapolated from relatives.
It is named for Max Weber, the Dutch zoologist whose Siboga expedition of 1899 to 1900 hauled up much of what was then known about Indo-Pacific fishes, and whose name is attached to a good many species that other people described from his material.
What can be said: it lives in shallow rubble, eats small crustaceans through a pipette snout, and the male broods the eggs. Everything past that is inference.
The genus. Cosmocampus Dawson 1979 - kosmos (ornament or decoration) + kampos (mythological sea monster). ETYFish
- small pale pipefish with faint darker bars and a short snout
- body rings distinctly ridged, giving a rough outline
- usually lying still among weed and rubble
- length up to 10 cm
Why it's threatened
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
