Latin name: Hippocampus bargibanti - Whitley, 1970

Common name: Pygmy Seahorse bargibanti

Distribution: Western Pacific

Photographic equipment used: compact digital camera Canon G7, G9, G10 + case Canon

Seahorse very small, called "pygmy" for its minute size, its maximum height not exceeding 3 cm. The muzzle is short and not very pronounced, the tail is long and prehensile, and it may have slightly darker rings or be completely coloured dark.

The most common color of the skin is pink-purple hue and presents striking rounded protuberances on the whole body of reddish-pink, but you can also find in the yellow-orange livery.

The Hippocampus bargibanti live in fact on two distinct types of Muricella, a gorgonian with sturdy branches and polyps rather thick, often open during the day. The specimens of pink-red colors, live associated to the Muricella plectana, while the specimens yellow-orange to the Muricella paraplectana. The mimicry of both really verges on perfection.

Surprising that this animal is monogamous and form stable pairs, as opposed to normal seahorses in which is the male to incubate the eggs in a ventral pouch from which spring the larvae, in the pygmy seahorse is the female who holds the eggs in an area the trunk, as you can see from the photograph below.

He lives mostly at depths varying between 15 and 30 meters.

The main differences with the Denise’s Pygmy seahorse are: the general size, the shape of the body and face and color.

Discovered only in the 70s quite accidentally: one scholar of octocorals of New Caledonia, having collected and transferred to an aquarium a big gorgonian type Muricella, while he was examining carefully the ramifications, he noticed that one of the twigs, small and twisted, watching him stright in the eyes!

Unfortunately we have found personally that the Hippocampus bargibanti is an easy prey for the Longnose hawkfish (Oxycirrhites typus) that with a very quick movement, suck and taste the Pygmy in only one mouthful!

Pictured here next 2 specimens of the Pygmy seahorse of type Hippocampus bargibanti.