Sea Moths

Scientific name : Pegasidae

The family Pegasidae belongs to the Singnathiformes order, including also seahorses and pipe fishes, ghost pipe fishes, trumpet fishes, and relatives. Sea moths are small bottom fishes, with a hard, flattened body, expanded chest, horizontal pectoral fins. The snout ends with a more or less long rostrum, the mouth is below the rostrum. Body and tail are covered with bony plates.
Very well camouflaged on the sandy bottoms where they live. They move crawling on the ventral fins, helping with the pectoral fins. They feed on small benthic crustaceans, swallowed with a tube like, protrusible, inferior mouth.
When mating, male and female swim upward together, eggs and sperm are released simultaneously. Eggs are planktonic.
The rostrum and the bony armoured tail are diagnostic charachters to distinguish those from other bottom fishes with large pectoral fins, like gurnards and some dragonets.
The family pegasidae includes 2 genera and 5 species in all. Normally they move around in pairs. Tha male can be more brilliantly coloured, especially in the pectoral fins, exhibited during the courtship.
It is a primitive singnathiform group. During the mating, it is not impossible that some eggs stay stuck amongst the bony plates of the male's or female's tail. Probably this is the evolutionary basis of the male parental care in pipe fishes, of female parental cares in ghost pipe fishes.