What happened when you show a ghost-pipefish to an open water student on his first or second dive?

This week, we welcomed Lasse from Denmark who came over to start with us his Divemaster course and I asked him this question. Answer surprised him a bit. It’s a shame in a way but it will take several dives for most of intro divers to realize how lucky they were… It’s a kind of a time bomb that will release its pleasure dose when they get a bit more experienced.

Explanation: here at Two Fish Amed we are very lucky to have a nice muck dive site just in front of our facility and we are even more lucky that this sandy bay, just two steps from the class room, is habitat for two kinds (Ornate and Robust) of the amazing Ghost-pipefish (Solenostomus).

When being in the water for the first or second time of your life, everything is new, everything is exciting and you clearly have no clue of what is rare or not. You just discover new sensations, observe fish in a brand new way and suddenly see your instructor pointing at some small stuff like it was possessed… Well, you look at it without really getting the point and continue your journey in the fairies of the underwater world.

The point with  Ghost-pipefish is first of all that it’s a seasonal fish you can’t observe all year long. At some point they are gone and you’ll have to wait another couple of months before they show up again. Moreover it has a limited habitat. This species lives in the Red Sea and in the tropical Indo-Pacific, from the coast of East Africa to Fiji, southern Japan and Australia.

Ghost-pipefish are masters of camouflage and are very likely to be confused with a dead piece of seagrass floating around. Their typical position is head-down in order to scan the sea bottom searching for preys. Regarding to these factors, you start to understand that such an encounter is nothing but usual.

So when your instructor or guide looks very excited about something he is pointing at, just think twice, you may see something you will never see again in your next hundred dives, like a Ghost-pipefish pretending to be a feather star’s arm.

Want to see the amazing Ghost-pipefish? Book your next dive trip with Two Fish Amed to discover them!