There are six varieties of pipefish living in British waters, the most noticeable of them being the largest, the greater pipefish, Syngnathus acus. For the amateur, the types are fairly difficult to distinguish from one another, with all species being long, thin and bony, and the juveniles of one species looking like the adults of another. They resemble stretched-out seahorses, to which they are related.
They are of no commercial value and therefore little studied and largely ignored but they occur all round Britain and Ireland. They are poor swimmers and after storms hundreds can be washed up and stranded at high tide. Adults can reach 45cm (18in) but are generally 35cm long.
Like seahorses, the males carry and care for their young after mating but have been known to consume their unborn offspring in order to build up strength when another more attractive female comes along. They have a small mouth at the end of a long snout that allows them to feed by sucking in tiny shrimps like a vacuum cleaner.
Their favoured home is among seagrass beds close to shore, a habitat badly degraded and threatened by seabed trawling. Seagrass provides perfect camouflage for their scaly and stripy bodies. Elsewhere, they are more vulnerable to being eaten by larger fish and seabirds.
