Black and white rings ending in a red and white paddle, working as a cleaner.
A pipefish to about 19 cm, the body a series of clean alternating black and cream rings from snout to tail, ending in a rounded caudal fin marked in red, white and black — a paddle out of proportion to the rest of the animal and visible from several metres. No other pipefish in the region carries both the ringing and that tail. Juveniles have the same pattern and are correspondingly easier to identify than most small pipefish.
Lives in pairs or small groups in crevices, under overhangs, in the mouths of caves and among rubble, usually hanging head-down against a vertical surface. It takes ectoparasites from other fish and is one of the few pipefish to do so, so a station can hold both the pipefish and a queue. Males brood the eggs on the underside of the tail rather than in a closed pouch, so a carrying male shows the eggs plainly. Recorded from the shallows to about 30 m. It works constantly and rarely holds still, and the reliable frame is taken by waiting on the spot it keeps returning to.
Older references list it as Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
