The long, slim seamoth: more tail and more snout than the short pegasus sea moth.
To about 18 cm, flattened top to bottom, encased in fused bony plates and carrying broad wing-like pectoral fins it does not fly with. The separation from Eurypegasus draconis, which shares the same ground, is proportion rather than colour: this animal is longer and slimmer, the tail behind the pectoral fins takes up much more of the total length, and the snout is longer and more finely tapered. E. draconis is short, squat and close to square in outline and stops at about 10 cm. Colour is brown with darker crosshatching and follows the substrate, running pale on light sand and close to black on volcanic sediment.
Shallow bays, estuaries, seagrass and open sand and mud, mostly shallower than 30 m though recorded to about 75. It crawls rather than swims, using modified pelvic fins as legs, and feeds by extending the mouth into a short tube and drawing small crustaceans and worms out of the sediment; the mouth is not permanently tubular as it is in a pipefish. Animals are usually found in pairs and the pairing appears to be durable. Spawning is into the water column rather than onto the bottom. The species is taken in quantity as trawl bycatch and for the dried trade, and its conservation status is listed as data deficient.
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.