A syngnathid covered in leaf-shaped appendages that do nothing but camouflage. It occurs only in southern Australia and is the animal most divers go there for.
To about 35 cm, and covered in long leaf-shaped skin appendages that are not fins and do nothing except break up the outline. It cannot change colour to match its background the way a cuttlefish can; the camouflage is structural and permanent, which is why it works in weed and nowhere else. The only fish it is confused with is the weedy seadragon, which is longer, has far fewer and shorter appendages, and is purple-red with yellow spots rather than the leafy’s olive and yellow. Both are Australian and their ranges overlap in South Australia.
It occurs in southern Australia and nowhere else on earth. It swims with transparent dorsal and pectoral fins that beat too fast to see, so the animal appears to drift rather than swim, and it feeds on mysid shrimps taken one at a time through a tube-shaped snout. As in the rest of the family it is the male that carries the eggs, held on a patch under the tail rather than in a pouch. Finding one is a matter of searching weed and kelp at the right sites in South Australia and south-west Western Australia, and it is one of the few animals on this site that people plan a whole trip around.
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.