Overview
- Researchers published the formal description in the Journal of Fish Biology, marking the first new ghost pipefish reported in more than two decades.
- The tiny fish wears hair-like red and orange filaments that mimic drifting algae, which lets divers swim past without noticing it.
- Micro‑CT scans counted 36 vertebrae, the most in the group, and DNA placed the species as an early branch that split from other ghost pipefishes about 18 million years ago.
- Records span decades, from a 1993 collection near Raine Island to a 2003 photo in Papua New Guinea to a male–female pair collected for the Australian Museum in 2022.
- The species is known from shallow coral reefs from Australia and Papua New Guinea east to Tonga in the western Pacific.