In shallow seas close to Australia, a well-known, trunked face emerges from billowing tufts of purple algae. The fish it belongs to, although, is new to science.
The woolly, reddish fish is quite a lot of ghost pipefish, camouflaged fishes associated to seahorses. The species — described for the primary time Might 10 within the Journal of Fish Biology — has a putting resemblance to Mr. Snuffleupagus, Huge Fowl’s shaggy, mammothlike good friend on Sesame Road.
Ghost pipefishes (Solenostomus) are so named as a result of their excessive camouflage and geometric silhouettes let the fishes disappear like apparitions into coral reefs. The long-snouted swimmers vary from the Pink Sea to the western Pacific Ocean, visually mimicking coral, algae and seagrass with spooky accuracy. Whereas scuba diving in Papua New Guinea in 2003, David Harasti — a marine biologist on the Port Stephens Fisheries Institute in Anna Bay, Australia — encountered a coppery, hairy-looking ghost pipefish not like any of the six beforehand recognized species.
A tiny fish named for a mammoth character
Ichthyologist Graham Brief and marine biologist David Harasti studied new specimens of Solenostomus snuffleupagus alongside beforehand unidentified ones collected from far northern Queensland in 1993 by the Australian Museum. The discover represents the primary new description of a ghost pipefish species in over twenty years.
Faucet the arrows to see extra photos of the snouted species.
G. Brief and D. Harasti/Journal of Fish Biology, 2026 Michael Workman, G. Brief and D. Harasti/Journal of Fish Biology, 2026 
David Harasti, G. Brief and D. Harasti/Journal of Fish Biology, 2026
“He knew straight away it was undescribed species,” says ichthyologist Graham In need of the Australian Museum Analysis Institute in Sydney.
Harasti returned to Papua New Guinea six instances, Brief says, however failed to search out it once more. Within the mid-2000s, divers reported seeing the bushy ghost pipefish across the Nice Barrier Reef. There, in 2022, Brief and Harasti succeeded in gathering a female and male to deliver again to the Australian Museum.
The fish — not than a matchstick — have developed to maneuver like floating algal particles, drifting passively backwards and forwards, Brief says. “They’re simply gorgeous underwater … It’s simply superb that they’re really fish.”
The bushy species is exclusive amongst ghost pipefish not just for its pelt of filaments, however it additionally has an additional vertebra and squatter form. An evolutionary tree primarily based on the fishes’ genes reveals the fuzzy species break up off from different ghost pipefishes early of their evolution, some 18 million years in the past.
Brief and Harasti named the fish Solenostomus snuffleupagus, for the reason that pipefish’s bushy visage and lengthy trunk reminded Harasti of the character from the basic youngsters’s program. The fish ranges from Australia and Papua New Guinea eastward to Tonga.
The researchers say that discoveries like this present that even coral reefs which might be exhaustively studied and sampled — such because the Nice Barrier Reef — can nonetheless maintain undescribed species. The duo’s subsequent challenge: describing a ghost pipefish that intently mimics sponges.
