Photos: Pygmy Seahorses

In addition to its amazing variety of pipefishes, Rajah Ampat was also home to the most pygmy seahorses I've ever seen. Normally found fairly deep, we found pygmies in water as shallow as 5 meters. In fact, I found a fan at 5 meters with over 30 individuals in it!

We saw three species of pygmies: Hippocampus denise, Hippocampus bargibanti, and Hippocampus pontohi (tentative name). There were also more color morphs here than I had ever seen. We saw pale, white denises with faint orange spots, pink ones, orange ones, and red ones with white spots. Bargibantis were less common for us, but were still plentiful.

I was especially excited to see the Coleman's pygmy (Hippocampus pontohi (tentative)), which I saw right off of Max Ammer's resort around Cape Kri. Unfortunately, when we found the bugger I had attached my macro lens with the focus limiter set. I did manage to get a few photos, but because of the focus limiter, none were as close as I would have liked. Oh, and it was here that my dive guide lost my Macromate external diopter while taking off his dive gear. It was my fault that I gave it to him to hold, but it was still a $1,000 mistake ($500 to replace the loaner that I lost, and $500 to buy another one!!).

Most species IDs and some image captions are courtesy of Judy Foester.