What does a guest who has visited Two Fish Lembeh 17 times over the past 6 years find new and fascinating on her current visit to the area? Ornate Ghost Pipefish that are carrying eggs! Her excitement, in turn, has made all the guests a bit more interested in the reproductive lives of Lembeh’s Pipefish…

Following a rather lengthy courtship display between a Seahorse or Pipefish couple, the female inserts her unfertilized eggs directly into the male’s “belly-pouch” (some female Pipefish deposit her eggs externally onto his belly). He then fertilizes the eggs and cares for them for the duration of their development. Once fully developed, the baby seahorses are forcefully expelled from the Seahorse brood-pouch in a fascinating display!

While closely related to Seahorses and Pipefish, the Ghost Pipefish is in a family of its own, and differs in its reproductive habits as well. A Ghost Pipefish is easily differentiated from Pipefish and Seahorse by the presence of obvious dorsal and pelvic fins. These distinct fins come in handy during Ghost Pipefish reproduction as the female’s large pelvic fins fuse, forming a brood-pouch. She then proceeds to carry and tend to her eggs in this fin-formed clutch (as pictured above) until they hatch.

This single, amazing behavior was only one of many incredible sightings in Lembeh this week. We continue to see a wide variety of Frogfish on most of our black-sand dive sites, including the Hairy Frogfish. We are also seeing a plethora of Octopus this week, including the Blue-Ring, Mototi and Mimic. Juvenile Pinnate Batfish provided all our photographers with a fun challenge this week, as did all the teeny-tiny Crabs, Shrimp, juvenile Painted Frogfish and Nudis that our Two Fish dive guides are so very good at spotting…