Example 5b

All images copyright protected, © Doug Segar and Elaine Stamman Segar.

In this enlargement of the previous photograph we have marked the location of the eye, mouth and body of the seahorse. Did you see it in the previous photograph? Its camouflage is not perfect, but remember, when the photograph was taken we had already spotted the seahorse. Think of how difficult it would be to see if, instead of less than 1 meter distance from which the photograph was taken, you were swimming through the seagrass bed several meters from the seahorse.

This seahorse, Hippocampus kuda, is about 30 cm long. It generally lives in very shallow water near the shore where there are seagrass beds or piles of leaf litter or other detritus and feeds mainly on plankton. In this shallow water, there is often a surge running back and forth as waves pass by on their way to the beach. The seahorses often wrap their prehensile tails around the base of a seagrass blade (or a branch or other item of detritus) and simply rock back and forth with the surge, behaving as if they are just leaves or other detritus. This behavior, of course, considerably enhances their camouflage. In some areas where this seahorse is found, there is little detritus. In these areas, the seahorse may be yellow, rather than the mottled yellow-brown of this specimen to better blend in with the sandy sea floor. In fact, they are able to change their color quite quickly.

Click the photo to see another photo of this species.