A stick-like sand pipefish separated from the double-ended mainly on snout length.
A stiff, stick-like pipefish reaching about 40 cm, pale grey-brown and usually plain or lightly speckled, with a long snout roughly as long as the rest of the head. The double-ended pipefish, Trachyrhamphus bicoarctatus, shares the shape, the habitat and the motionless posture; snout proportion is the working difference, along with the darker saddles and dark tail fin the double-ended usually carries. On a fish lying flat in silt this can be genuinely unresolved, and a photograph of the head in profile settles it more often than a look in the water does.
Open sand and silt from about 5 to 35 m, lying on the bottom or standing at a slight angle with the head raised, and moving in slow glides on the dorsal fin alone. Pairs are common and the two fish are usually within a few metres of each other. Males carry the eggs in rows on the underside of the tail with no pouch closing over them, so a brooding fish is obvious from below. It does not flee, which makes it straightforward to approach, and it does not move, which is why divers pass over it.
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.