Fringed with leafy flaps along its whole length and almost never seen away from weed.
A syngnathid to about 30 cm, the body ridged and angular and fringed the whole way along with leaf-shaped skin flaps that continue the outline of the weed it lives in. Colour is yellow-brown to olive, often with reddish mottling. It is not one of the Australian seadragons — those are Phyllopteryx and Phycodurus and occur far to the south — but a pipefish in its own genus that has converged on the same solution.
Ranges through northern Australia, southern New Guinea and eastern Indonesia, and is uncommon everywhere it occurs. It lies among weed, sponge and rubble on silty bottoms, moving slowly and rarely leaving cover, and males brood the eggs on the underside of the tail as in the rest of the family. Recorded from about 3 to 25 m. Finding one is a matter of luck and of a guide with a search image for a piece of weed with a head on it; a fish found in a patch will usually still be in that patch on the next dive.
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.