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The Romance of Seahorses

A marine biologist and photographer gets up close and personal with mysterious pygmy seahorses.

Crossing the Indonesian reef crest, with the sun rising behind me, I dropped down the coral wall, still in blackness save for a school of bioluminescent flashlight fish, whose symbiotic bacteria emitted an incongruous glow from specialized sacs beneath their eyes. These critical times allow the bonding pair to synchronize their reproductive cycles, a process that provides the female with the assurance she needs to hydrate their clutch of eggs—a necessary step before they are ready to be transferred to her mate. Using as little light as I am able to in order to watch the events unfolding before me, I see the rotund pregnant male pygmy seahorse risk his life by releasing his vice-like grasp on the fan-like gorgonian coral to fight the current and swim to where it strikes with most force.

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