A stubby pipefish of shallow weed and rubble, far shorter in the body than the messmates.
A short, thickset pipefish to about 8 cm, brown to olive with pale bars and a scatter of white flecks, and a body noticeably deeper and shorter than in the messmate and network pipefishes. The snout is short and slightly upturned. At this size and shape the animal reads more like a length of twig than like a pipefish, and it is normally found by a movement rather than by an outline.
It lives in shallow water, mostly above about 12 m, among low weed, algae, seagrass and fine rubble, and it stays down in the growth rather than crossing open sand. Pairs and small loose groups occur on the same patch. Feeding is on small crustaceans taken from the surface of the weed.
Males in this genus brood the eggs on the underside of the trunk rather than on the tail, which is unusual within the family and is visible on a brooding animal as a double row of eggs well forward on the body. Recorded across the tropical Indo-West Pacific. The shallow weed it uses is ground most muck dives cross without stopping, and the species is under-recorded for that reason as much as any other.
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.