The Ghost pipefish or Solenostomidae is a family of small fish (less than 15 cm) with a very good camouflage. It spends long part of its adult life the head down.
Its camouflage and small size meaning it is very difficult to see it.
The dive site – snorkeling in Pantai Sire
Front of our dive center, there is a coral reef. The maximum deep is 8-10 meters. Deeper, there is a sandy bottom.
I dove a little bit further for looking for an object lost by a catamaran. I found quickly the object, dive time 9 minutes, so I swam to the reef and visited it. I wanted to watch the nice pink fans.
In the first fan, there were many small shrimps. But they were always moving so I couldn’t have a good picture, they are blur:
I saw a stingray, a lion fish and a scorpion fish.
The third fan was with many small fishes a beautiful Lionfish and a Ghost pipefish. So I spend 30 minutes there.
This site is also good for the night dives, especialy if you don’t care about the deep (10-12 meters maximum).
And, this site is nice for snorkeling, there are nice corals, fans, sometimes seahorses and just front of the resort.
A pink ghost pipefish in Sire beach
Usualy, the ghost pipefish I have already seen were brown / black like the one:
But, this one was pink like the fan.
And it was the first time I saw one in a fan.
Here it closer, its body is transparent :
The scientific name of this specie is Solenostomus paradoxus and the Wikipedia page doesn’t have many informations.
It was near a nice Lionfish. I saw the ghost pipefish when I took a picture of the lionfish.
The both are on this picture:
The ghost pipefish lives with the head down. it is looking for food and its camouflage is more efficient as it stay near vertical life like comatule.
More pictures diving lombok
I have more than 150 pictures.
This fish Solenostomus paradoxus was 2-3 meters deep and at 5 minutes swimming from the dive center in Lombok.
And few days ago, I went swimming and I meet a Manta Ray.
