Short-snouted seahorse

This is the plainer of Malta's two seahorses. The body is the familiar upright, armoured S-shape of bony rings, held with the head bent forward at right angles and the prehensile tail curled around whatever it is gripping. The snout is short and deep, roughly a third of the head length or less, and the body is comparatively smooth, without the fleshy skin filaments that fringe the neck of the long-snouted species. Colours run from dark charcoal and chocolate through olive, orange and dull yellow, sometimes with faint pale speckles, and an individual can shift tone over days to match its background. Adults are usually 8 to 12 cm tall and reach about 15 cm.

Around the Maltese islands it lives on sheltered, sediment-rich bottoms: the edges of Posidonia meadows, patches of loose algae, dead seagrass matte and rubble in quiet bays, most often between about 2 and 25 metres. Mġarr ix-Xini, Ras il-Ħobż and other calm inlets have produced sightings, but nobody should expect one. Both Maltese seahorse populations are poorly known and very sparse, and most divers here go years without seeing either.

Seahorses barely move. They hold a home range of a few square metres, feed by flicking that short snout at passing mysids and copepods, and reproduce with the male carrying the eggs in a sealed belly pouch and giving birth to fully formed young. The young then drift as plankton for weeks before settling, which is one reason local numbers are so unpredictable.