New species of hairy ghost pipefish named for Mr Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street
Call it fate, luck, or instinct, but when David Harasti dived near a coral wall off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 2002, a tuft of red algae floating in a shadowy outcrop caught his eye. And then he moved.
The fish scientist’s film camera captured the oddity, marking the beginning of a quarter-century search. This search resulted in the most extraordinary discovery of Harasti’s career: an ultra-rare and strange little monster new to science, named after Sesame Street’s most legendary resident, Mr. Snuffleupagus.
“When I got back to Australia, I processed the film camera photos and I could actually see an eye,” Harasti, now principal research scientist at the Port Stephens Fisheries Institute, recalls of the 2002 encounter.
“That’s when I realized it was actually an animal. And it wasn’t in any of my books. Then I knew it was a new species. We knew it was a type of ghost pipefish, but it was a species we’d never seen before.”
He searched the world for an official specimen of this strange, wild creature that was no taller than a matchstick.
“I went to Papua New Guinea six times to find him; I never saw him. I went to the Solomon Islands because I heard someone had seen him there, but I never saw him,” Harasti said.
“I was looking for this species all over the Indo-Pacific for 20 years and never saw it again.”
Like the underwater Yowie, occasional sightings of pipefish have appeared in books and blogs. Some saw her in an orange outfit, while others saw her in a purple and green outfit. But it was always furry.
Meanwhile, Harasti searched, and the blurred ghost wavered between scientific promise and legend.
Part of his obsession stemmed from the creature’s resemblance to Mr. Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street, a victorious but elusive mammoth-like puppet introduced as Big Bird’s imaginary best friend.
“If I remember correctly, he was a rare, legendary creature that people didn’t believe in,” Harasti said of the character. “No one ever saw him.”
The fish’s similarity in body and soul to Mr. Snuffleupagus has also captured the imagination of Graham Short, a global expert in identifying new species of syngnathids, the family of fish that includes pipefish, seahorses and sea dragons. He joined the long search.
Everything changed in 2020. His friends warned Harasti that they were spying on mysterious fish in the Great Barrier Reef and sent him photos.
Harasti had a license to collect samples and one last shot.
He and Short flew to Cairns and raced to where the fish had been spotted on Saxon Reef. Nothing. They then dived to a second location.
There, 15 meters deep and in a coral nook filled with red filamentous algae, scientists found two of the hairy pipefish: a male and a female. Enough to describe a new species.
“Graham and I were hugging underwater. I’m not kidding. We were high-fiving, we were so excited he was there,” Harasti said.
“This is something I’ve been looking for for 20 years. It’s the holy grail of the ghost pipefish world, the rarest of rare.”
Harasti collected the specimens and Short began the taxonomic work. He CT-scanned the tiny fish to examine the structure of its bones, measured its fin rays and snout lengths, and analyzed its genetics to distinguish the fish from other species.
Scientists officially announced the new species Journal of Fish Biology On Tuesday, he named it the hairy ghost pipefish and gave it its scientific name Solenostomus snuffleupagus.
“I always told Graham: If we can get these samples, we’ll name it after Snuffleupagus. Sesame Streetsaid Harasti, and approached Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit production company behind the show, to get their approval.
“They were very happy with everything,” Harasti said. “This hairy ghost pipefish is so rare, so elusive, it’s avoided us for so long. So everything matches: it’s got hairy filaments, it’s got a long snout, it’s a really good replica of Mr. Snuffleupagus underwater, and it’s got the same mystery about it.”
The samples contained tiny fish in their stomachs, and the species probably also fed on mysid shrimp and zooplankton. Its conservation status is unknown, but this discovery will be crucial to future conservation and conservation efforts of pipefish; you can’t protect something without a name.
“But I’m sure it’s more common than we think; it’s so small and so well camouflaged that people are probably swimming over it thinking it’s a piece of seaweed and they don’t even know what it is.”
Harasti and Short discovered several species that are new to science; There is even a species of pipefish named after Harasti. “This is undoubtedly our best achievement.”
The couple’s next goal is to move on Sesame Street and meet Mr. Snuffleupagus.
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Angus Dalton is science correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect with: X or email.
