On  Thursday, January 24, 2002 9:45 PM, Christian Gerzner wrote:

(snip)

> > We've certainly seen juvenile flutemouths in midwater and close to the
> > bottom, but they've all seemed to be similar in shape but much smaller
in
> > size than the adults.  The pipefish that I've seen also tend to be more
> > flexible in their joints, (like snakes) than do the flutemouths!  :-)

> 6cm, as quoted above, is pretty short for a flutemouth, what
> throws/threw me is that the otherwise diagnostic skinny tail behind
> the conventional rear fin was not evident. I've seen 'em before, it's
> just that this time I asked the question.

> There seem to be two things agin 'em locally:

> If it's a juvenile, why in the middle of the water column? It's too
> (relatively) big to hide (although it tries to emulate a weed, doesn't
> move unless disturbed)

Bugger'd if I know! :-)

> It's pretty far south of its usual watery domain, although right now
> we have about 23C (73F)

Err!  Pardon me!  We're to the south of you and we see flutemouths year
round! :-)

Strike