Underwater photos have solved a marine mystery that had stumped scientists for decades: how the elusive red pipefish carries its eggs. The answer, it turns out, is that the male carries them directly on his trunk.
According to Australian Geographic, the red pipefish is a rare Australian relative of seahorses and seadragons, and it is notoriously difficult to spot in the wild. Its thin body and deep red coloring let it blend almost perfectly into feathery algae and rocky reef habitats across southern Australia.
New images and research were published in the Journal of Fish Biology after a researcher who regularly dives the popular Botany Bay sites managed to track one individual for months.
The researcher said he first spotted the fish at Kurnell in April 2021 and kept following the same individual through "almost weekly" sightings until January 2022.
In the images, a male red pipefish is clearly shown with "large eggs attached directly to the belly."
The finding answers a long-standing scientific question about an animal so well camouflaged that, before this, only one person had photographed it in the wild.
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It happened in part because of repeated dives at a heavily visited recreational site, where patient observation and underwater photography helped researchers document something no one had been able to confirm before.
"Finding such a rare fish in the well-dived waters of Gamay is a reminder that major biological secrets are still hiding in plain sight," the researchers wrote.
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