The common pipefish of rubble, working the bottom in pairs all day.
A slender pipefish to about 15 cm, pale cream to pink, patterned over the head and along the body with a network of fine red-brown lines and a series of narrow darker bands. The snout is long and thin and the tail fin is small and often edged in red. Several Corythoichthys occur together on the same ground and are separated on the detail of the head pattern rather than on the body bands, which is finer work than most photographs support.
The most frequently encountered pipefish on a muck site, and one of the few that works in the open in daylight — a pair moves slowly over rubble and sand, snouts down, taking small crustaceans from the surface, and pairs stay together over long periods. Males brood the eggs in a partly enclosed pouch under the tail. Recorded from the shallows to about 25 m. It is common enough to be ignored, which is a reasonable way to treat the tenth one on a dive and a poor way to treat the first.
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.