San Diego gave me the chance to see for the first time live what is probably my favourite animal: the leafy sea dragon. When I first became interested in camouflage and mimicry the sea dragon grabbed my attention as one of nature’s finest whimsies. A cousin of the much better known sea horses, the sea dragons are fishes that live amongst seaweed and camouflage themselves with many floating excrescences that perfectly match the drifting swags and fronds of their environment. Their elongated snout gives them a very strong facial character and the impression the animal creates is that of a punk jester in tattered raiment.
Leafy sea dragons are not Californian natives: I saw them in the Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institute for Oceanography but they are only found in the wild off southern Australia. My first sight of a live, swimming sea dragon was a surprise because they are usually yellow bodied with green appendages but the aquarium animal was almost transparent: they can colour match to their surroundings and the tanks they were kept in were relatively colourless. The oddities of sea dragons don’t stop with their camouflage. Most notably, the male broods the young on brood patches on the tail. They are, of course, threatened and the Scripps Institute has a program to breed them in captivity.
Leafy sea dragons are not Californian natives: I saw them in the Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institute for Oceanography but they are only found in the wild off southern Australia. My first sight of a live, swimming sea dragon was a surprise because they are usually yellow bodied with green appendages but the aquarium animal was almost transparent: they can colour match to their surroundings and the tanks they were kept in were relatively colourless. The oddities of sea dragons don’t stop with their camouflage. Most notably, the male broods the young on brood patches on the tail. They are, of course, threatened and the Scripps Institute has a program to breed them in captivity.
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