The common Atlantic seahorse, holding to seagrass, sponge, rope and debris. Blue Heron Bridge is one of the more reliable places to find one.
To about 18 cm. Deep-bodied and robust. The crown on the head usually carries sharp points, there are often fine white lines running down the neck and across the trunk, and skin filaments are common. The colour is highly variable — orange, red, brown, grey or black.
The longsnout seahorse is the Caribbean pair that matters, and two features separate them. This one has a shorter, deeper snout and a spiny crown; the longsnout has a distinctly longer and more slender snout, about half the length of its head, and a low rounded crown with no spines. The longsnout is also more often covered in fine dark dots.
It grips seagrass, sponges, sea fans, dock piles and drifting weed with its tail and feeds by sucking in small crustaceans through the snout. It tolerates brackish water and is found in estuaries as well as on reef, from the surface to about 100 m though usually shallow. The male carries the eggs for about three weeks.
It is listed as vulnerable, and on Appendix II of CITES.
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.