The pipefish a diver here actually sees: sixteen centimeters (6 in) of pale, barred fish moving slowly over rubble between coral heads, usually with a second one nearby.
The second one is the point. These fish are monogamous, and the pair meets every morning - the two swim together, align side by side and greet, then separate to feed and repeat it the next day. The ritual keeps the pair bond alive through a breeding season in which the female must deliver eggs to a male whose brood is ready at exactly the right time, and a female who loses her partner needs weeks to establish another.
He carries the eggs on the underside of his tail, in a strip rather than a closed pouch, and they hatch as miniature adults with no larval drift at all.
It hunts copepods one by one, sucked in through a snout that ends in a mouth barely wider than the animals it eats. Watch one for a minute and the head will flick a dozen times; each flick is a meal.
The genus. Corythoichthys Kaup 1853 - corythos (helmet) + ichthys (fish). ETYFish
The species. Corythoichthys schultzi Herald 1953 - Honours Leonard P. Schultz. ETYFish
- pale body with red-brown bars and fine dark speckling
- orange-red markings on the snout and around the eye
- almost always in a pair, working the same patch of rubble
- length up to 16 cm
