The Tiniest Seahorse and Its Diver

This was the story that happened at Derawan Island, 

situated in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. 

The island is small, quiet and beautiful 

surrounded by the blue water of Sulawesi/Celebes Sea. 

The sunrise and sunset are magnificent. 

Sea turtles come in the morning and 

drop their eggs off at the sandy beach. 

Many kinds of fish live there. 

They are available to view and of course, to eat. 

Have you ever eaten a cooked fish freshly caught from the sea? Believe me when I say it’s a heaven for your taste buds.

The beauty of Derawan attracts many divers. 

One of them is a lady from Japan called Satomi Onishi. 

She is a professional diver. 

She works with the tourist, leading them diving under the sea. 

On that particular year, there weren’t many guests for her. 

Miss Satomi Onishi got bored. 

Unlike many of us who dive in the sea of virtual reality, 

she dived in the Sulawesi sea to explore. 

In one of her research dive, she found something like a dust collected on the coral reef. 

The more she saw, the more curious she became. 

She brought her underwater camera 

and started to shoot some videos. 

Finally she came into conclusion that the so called dust 

were some very tiny seahorses. 

She collected the specimens and got into the taxanomic process. Hippocampus Satomiae is named after Miss Satomi Onishi to honor her. I called it the power of boredom that leads to the founding of a new species.

So what is so special about Satomi Pygmy Seahorse? 

Well, it is the smallest seahorse in the world for now. 

It’s about the size of a pea. The young one is about the size of an apostrophe written in font size 12. 

Seahorse is very unique because the male 

is the one who is pregnant and carrying the eggs inside his body.

 

As for Miss Onishi, now she lives in West Bali as a manager in Sari Dive and Cottage.  

pictures taken from :http://1.bp.blogspot.com/, national geographic.com, and facebook