Amongst my many diving related books is a copy of “Coral Reef Guide Red Sea” by Ewald Lieske & Robert F. Meyers (published by Collins). This book helps me to identify new sightings, relive memorable encounters and acts as a wish-list, showing me lots of wonderful creatures that I have yet to see, such as the Helmeted Gurnard or the Dragon Sea moth (amongst many others).

One fish that has always eluded me is the ornate ghost pipefish (Solenostomus paradoxus) and, as an avid underwater photographer, this strange looking creature has been high on my wish list for several years. Imagine my joy then when earlier in the year a friend told me that he knew where two of these fish were nesting and that the site was accessible from shore? Without further delay we arranged an early morning dive at the site in question (early morning for two reasons; firstly, because we were both working that day and early morning was the only chance to dive for fun and secondly, we didn’t want other people to discover the nest) and set off with our cameras.

Once we arrived at the site and entered the water, my friend escorted me to a small rock pinnacle at 16m, no higher than 40cm and gestured “here you go”. To begin with I thought he’d taken me to the wrong spot. The pinnacle was covered in small, flower-like soft white corals that were constantly in motion, opening and closing while they feed. Very pretty to look at, but not the reason I had risen early that morning. I was just about to signal “what the hell are you showing me this for” when I realized that as I was swimming around the pinnacle, some of the “corals” were moving around the pinnacle and trying their best to position the pinnacle between themselves and me.

Of course the corals were in fact the ornate ghost pipefish, a heavily pregnant female and her smaller male partner. One of my dream sightings had come true AND I had my camera with me. I was a happy, happy diver. Ironically we also had a newly qualified diver with us and she didn’t seem impressed with the pipefish (wanting to see larger creatures such as turtles, rays and, of course, sharks), even though, as we explained to her, my friend and I had over 15 years experience of diving in the Red Sea and, until now, had never seen one ornate pipefish between us.

A genuine icon of macro photography, the ornate ghost pipefish are relatively small, strange and fascinating creatures. Often associated with feather stars and certain soft corals, their colours and appendages typically resemble those of their crinoid home, helping them blend in and thus avoiding predators. As they are slow moving and virtually defenseless, their camouflage is their most important attribute. When not nesting, pipefish lead a pelagic existence, hanging suspended head down in the water, hardly moving, trying to pass as bits of sea weed or mangrove leaves. Usually divers only encounter them when they come close to land for nesting and this is why i) divers rarely see them and ii) when we do see them, they are usually in pairs (the larger one typically being the female, the smaller one the male). Even though they are close relatives of the seahorses, the females, and not the males, hold the eggs by forming a pouch with her pelvic fins. The male then fertilizes the eggs in this pouch. Once the eggs have been fertilized, stalks (known as cotylephores) develop from the skin and adhere to the eggs, acting like umbilical cords, transferring nutrients and oxygen from the female to the eggs

Literally a week after I’d seen my first ornate pipefish, I was diving at another site in the Ras Mohamed National Park. It hadn’t been a particularly good dive for me, I’d seen nothing new, nor any creature behaving in any way that I hadn’t seen before, and the creatures I was looking for in particular (frogfish, hairy pipehorses and sea moths) I’d been unable to find. So as to ensure the dive wasn’t completely wasted, I decided to take some stock photos of corals at a beautiful glassfish pinnacle. Just as I turned shoreward to exit the water, a heavily pregnant ornate pipefish just drifted past me, no more than 2 meters from my face, and joined her partner on a coral head covered in fire coral and black feather stars. This coral head I had already passed numerous times during 5 separate dives at the dive site; I’d even got photos I’d taken of the fire coral and crinoids that, on closer examination, showed the pipefish. This illustrates several things, i) pipefish are excellent at concealment, ii) feather stars are great places to look for pipefish, iii) you’ll often find pipefish in pairs and iv) maybe I need a prescription mask?

As a side note, I’m still looking for a Helmeted Gurnard …