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Ribboned Seadragon
Haliichthys taeniophorus Gray, 1859
Head of a Ribboned Seadragon caught in the Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia, August 2000. View larger image.
A Ribboned Seadragon caught in the Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia, August 2000. View larger image.
The earliest depictions of Rainbow Serpents, thought to be 4000-6000 years old, most closely resemble seadragons and pipefishes. This example from western Arnhem Land is one of the best preserved. View larger image.
The Ribboned Seadragon can be recognised by its elongate body with bony knobs above the eyes and spines on the body ridges.
It grows to 30cm in length.
The Ribboned Seadragon is known from the central coast of Western Australia around the tropical north to northern Queensland. It usually inhabits trawling grounds.
View a map of the collecting localities of specimens in the Australian Museum Fish Collection.
Despite its common name, the Ribboned Seadragon is not a true seadragon (which occur only in southern Australia - view fact sheet), but a member of the pipehorse group of fishes.
Strong similarities to the Ribboned Seadragon can be seen in prehistoric depictions of the Rainbow Serpent, an ancestral being of Australian Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people depicted the Rainbow Serpent over thousands of years.
The research of Taçon et al (see further reading) suggests that the Ribboned Seadragon may be the origin of the earliest Rainbow Serpent paintings.
Further reading
- Allen, G.R. 1997. Marine Fishes of Tropical Australia and South-east Asia. Western Australian Museum. Pp. 292.
- Allen, G.R. & R. Swainston. 1988. The Marine Fishes of North-Western Australia. A Field Guide for Anglers and Divers. Western Australian Museum. Pp. 201.
- Paxton, J.R., D.F. Hoese, G.R. Allen & J.E. Hanley. 1989. Zoological Catalogue of Australia Vol.7 Pisces Petromyzontidae to Carangidae. Canberra: Australian Biological Resources Survey. Pp. i-xii, 1-665.
- Taçon, P.S.C., Wilson, M and C. Chippindale. 1996. Birth of the Rainbow Serpent in Arnhem land rock art and oral history. Archaeology in Oceania. 31(3): 103-24.
