Dragons of the Deep

Animal or Vegetable? Fish or fantasy? Looking like a tangle of seaweed, the leafy sea dragon- a relative of the sea horse- swims in a dreamy motion through grassland of marine algae. The 30cm. creature, a true fish, sprouts leaflike appendages that mimic vegetation in its habitat. The dragon's bony exterior helps ward off attack by predators that aren't fooled by its camouflage. Swimming slowly about, it sucks up marine microorganisms and small worms with its tubelike snout. The sea dragon is rarely seen except when it is thrown ashore by storms. In a turn=about of usual sexual roles, the male of the species carries the young through the hatching period. The female deposits 100 to 250 eggs on the underside of her mate's tail, where they are fertilized and protected in cuplike supports. Within each egg the embryo appears as a reddish mess. After three to five weeks, the half-inch long hatchings are released into the sea. Transparent fins flutter almost invisibly as they propel the stiff bodied creature slowly through tangled beds of kelp (large brown seaweed). The weedy sea dragon, more common than the leafy variety and as much as 15cm. longer, favors shallower depths near the low-tide line. The two species are rarely found together. It is really a remarkable fish, the sea dragon and its relatives, the sea horse and the pipefish, belong to the suborder Syngnathoidei. All have bodies encased in a bony armor, and most have longish snouts. While sea dragons are apparently limited to the offshore waters, several kinds of sea horses and pipefish are scattered throughout tropical and temperate waters. Whereas the male sea dragon carries the eggs on the underside of the tail itself, the male sea horse carries them concealed in a pouch under the tail and ejects the newly hatched brood in multiple spasms after an incubation period of about ten days. This 10cm. specimen shares the same general habitat as the sea dragon. More streamlined than either the sea dragon or sea horse, a brightly colored ghost pipefish, about 8cm. long, darts about more swiftly than its slow moving relatives, this ornate specimen looks like so much dancing sunlight when seen in its usual environment among billowing fields of multicolored seaweed.