BEAUTIFUL FISH: SEAHORSE – By Al Bezanson

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“The sea horse grotesquely resembles the “knight” in an ordinary set of wooden chessmen in its sidewise flattened body, in its deep convex belly, in its curved neck and in its curious horselike head carried at right angles to the general axis of the body. The head is surmounted by a pentagonal star-shaped “coronet,” and the snout is tubular with the small oblique mouth at its tip, like that of its relative the pipefish.”

This exquisite pen and ink drawing from 1883 by H. L. Todd is just one of many by this artist in Fishes of the Gulf of Maine by Bigelow and Schroeder, 576 pp, 1953. The book is available free online courtesy of MBL/WHOI. http://www.gma.org/fogm/

 

 

 

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Published by Kimsmithdesigns

Documentary filmmaker, photographer, landscape designer, author, and illustrator. "Beauty on the Wing: Life Story of the Monarch Butterfly" currently airing on PBS. Current film projects include Piping Plovers, Gloucester's Feast of St. Joseph, and Saint Peter's Fiesta. Visit my websites for more information about film and design projects at kimsmithdesigns.com, monarchbutterflyfilm.com, and pipingploverproject.org. Author/illustrator "Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities! Notes from a Gloucester Garden."

4 thoughts on “BEAUTIFUL FISH: SEAHORSE – By Al Bezanson”

    1. You have it right, Bonnie … “Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine – The sea horse is not common much beyond New York. Only a few are found each year about Woods Hole, chiefly in July, August and September, and they so rarely stray past the elbow of Cape Cod that we have found only one definite (Provincetown) and one dubious (Massachusetts Bay) record of its capture in the inner parts of the Gulf of Maine, dead or alive; and one record on Georges Bank. Three specimens of sea horse were also reported from Nova Scotia more than 3/4 of a century ago.”

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      1. And Tony Gross has caught several Lined Seahorses (Hippocampus erectus) in his lobster pots in Ipswich Bay :).

        Hippocampus erectus and Hippocampus hudsonius are the same species. H. hudsonius is the term for the species that is no longer in use.

        https://goodmorninggloucester.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/update-on-gloucesters-little-seahorse/
        https://goodmorninggloucester.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/seahorse-capture-in-gloucester-waters/
        https://goodmorninggloucester.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/gloucesters-little-seahorse-final-update/
        https://goodmorninggloucester.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/seahorse-caught-by-tony-gross-feeding-on-baby-lobster/

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