A slender banded pipefish of rubble and coral, with a dark tail fin edged in pale.
A pipefish to about 10 cm, pale cream to fawn, finely speckled and crossed by narrow darker bands, with a row of small dark spots low on the flank and fine red and white markings over the snout and the top of the head. The tail fin is small and dark with a pale margin. The body is slender and the snout long in proportion, which separates it from the brown-banded pipefish of the same rubble, a shorter and deeper-bodied animal with a short snout.
It works over rubble, dead coral and encrusted rock rather than over open sand, moving in short runs with the body held against the substrate and pausing with the head lifted. Feeding is on very small crustaceans picked from the surface one at a time. Pairs are usual, and a pair covers little enough ground that both can be followed for most of a dive.
Males carry the eggs on the underside of the tail in a shallow open groove rather than in a closed pouch, so the clutch is visible from below. The Corythoichthys pipefishes are separated on snout and head markings and on the pattern of the tail fin, and a photograph of the body alone will often not settle which species it is. Recorded from the western Pacific and the eastern Indian Ocean, from a few metres to about 30 m.
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.