Usually 4 to 8 inches long; occasionally up to 12 inches. The chief home of this pipefish is among eelgrass or seaweeds, both in salt marshes, harbors, and river mouths, where it often goes up into brackish water, and on more open shores as well. In such locations it is caught as often today by boys dipping up mummichogs for bait as it was when Storer wrote of it, nearly a century ago. Male pipefishes nurse the eggs in the brood pouch. The embryos within the eggs are nourished by the epithelial lining layer of the pouch, so that the latter functions as a placenta. The young are retained in the brood pouch until they are 8 or 9 mm. long, when the yolk sac has been absorbed.
From Fishes of the Gulf of Maine by Bigelow and Schroeder (1953) online courtesy of MBL/WHOI http://www.gma.org/fogm/Syngnathus_fuscus.htm
Good Morning Gloucester 