It’s only until their mate fails to appear at their special sites after several days that a seahorse decides to move on and find a new dance partner. Many seahorses will stay faithful, dancing only with their partner and ignoring solicitations from strangers. After their daily greetings, they either mate or separate, and each return home. It’s also believed that these daily greetings help synchronize the two partners’ breeding cycles. The charismatic lined seahorse ( Hippocampus erectus) is thought to be monogamous (like many other seahorse species) and they perform this ritual dance every morning at dawn to reestablish the pair bond with their single mate. Their partner will have to wait till tomorrow. When one breaks loose, this signals that the dance may be over. They will often link tails and swim around in parallel circles as the dance intensifies.
They rapidly change their luminance, shining bright pale yellow and silver and then dimming to a dark gray, then repeating the pattern. The dance opens in lights, with paired seahorses rising and falling in the water column. What isn’t as well known, however, is what comes before: an elegant, ritualized courtship dance. Male seahorses are famous for their unusual strategy of carrying developing embryos and birthing the fry. Before long, they wriggle toward one another, pairing up at predetermined rendezvous points and begin swimming up and down, tails oscillating side to side.
As orange sunlight begins to creep over the shallow seabed and scatter across the tropical water, seahorses emerge from their hiding spots within the gently-swaying marine vegetation.
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