It’s a year since I last posted about these amazing little creatures, seahorses. I featured a number of photos by Melinda Riger, a couple of videos, some useful facts about them, and for some reason some useless facts that I came across in researching the post. You can chase it down here: SEAHORSES 1
Adam Rees of SCUBA WORKS is another diver, like Melinda, who combines great underwater experience with wonderful photographic skills. This posts showcases some of Adam’s seahorse photography, and if it doesn’t want to make you explore the reefs, I can’t think what will…
Seahorse Range Map
All phantastic photos: Adam Rees / Scuba Works; Range Map, Nat Geo; Lifecycle diagram, Seahorserun; Seahorse GIF, Alex Konahin
Imagine that you are swimming along resplendent in your snorkelling gear (me) – or in scuba gear for the advanced swimmer (you). There, below you, camouflaged against the sea bottom is a fish. A strange-shaped brown sort of creature with odd side fins. As it progresses over the gravelly sand, your immediate reaction is ‘what the…?’ Its fins seem to be turning into… wings. Like this:
Yes, it’s a flying gurnard. Unlike flying fish, it can’t actually fly through the air. But once its wings are fully spread, it certainly looks as though it could.
WHAT’S THE POINT OF THE WINGS IF THE THING CAN’T FLY?
This gurnard species usually gets around using its ventral fins as ‘legs’, with the pectoral fins (‘wings’) close to the body. There seem to be several possible reasons for possessing the ‘sudden-deployment-of-flashy-wings’ superpower.
It surprises and deters predators by movement, turning prospective prey into an apparently different creature
Bright or lurid colouring may be a deterrent warning of a foul-tasting or poisonous species (APOSEMATISM)
A creature may actually be harmless and even tasty (as here) but may appear to be unpalateable or poisonous(BATESIAN MIMICRY)
In any event, the wings enable the fish to take off from the sea bottom and travel faster by ‘flying’ thought the water to escape a predator
Here’s a short video of a flying gurnard on the move, from ‘Sia Big Fish’
Credits: All main images Adam Rees / Scuba Works with many thanks, except final one ‘cralize wiki’; Hyperallergic for the historic image; Sia Big Fish for the video
ROLLING HARBOUR ABACO 
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