A new species of pigmy sea horse has very recently been named, here it is most commonly known as the plucked chicken pigmy sea horse. It was named Hippocampus denise by a team of experts from the McGill University in Montreal Canada. The sea horse has been named after the underwater photographer Denise Tackett who has spent many years diving in the Indonesian waters.
H. denise is generally found on the subergorgia mollis sea fan they have been seen on different occasions on what I believe to be the echinogorgia (meneela) sp. as shown in the image by Adam Powell. These are also seen in a variety of colours though the red colouration is a very rare sighting. Like the H. bargibanti it probably feeds on the zooplankton that the sea fan feeds upon.
Recently we have been seeing a variation of this species very regularly with more bumps as shown in the photo below taken on Satonda Island. These are being seen on a few different echinogorgia sp. Many ID books have these down as being the H. bargibanti though they surely must be the H. denise as they have longer snouts which is a feature which is used to identify sea horses.
The H. denise is generally smaller in size to the H. bargibanti and are around 15mm and the depth range is also similar though I have made notes and these seem to more commonly seen in depths at around 10-20m / 30-60'. The life is as yet unknown though I have seen this species on a sea fan over a period of around 7 months. I had seen it develop, at first there were two individuals, the larger of the two was first to go, then slowly the other became slower to react. Then one dive I noticed it started to have algae on it's body, it also looked rather dishevelled, the next trip I went to see it, it had gone ahhh....
Source:
http://www.diving4images.com/creature_features.html
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