Pipefish hunting!

This weekend Dr. Krejci, JaKaila and Dr. Krejci’s oldest son went scouting pipefish locations in the Indian River Lagoon. It was a cold but successful day searching for the gulf pipefish, Syngnathus scovelli.

This was Ja’Kaila’s first time in the field and she was incredibly brave in new surroundings, slightly unclear water teeming with weird critters and nets full of drift algae with unknown inhabitants

Ja’Kaila using the push net at the edge of the drift algae line

Ja’Kaila was learning field techniques and how to identify and sex pipefish.

Ja’Kaila sorting through the push net contents for pipefish. She developed a quick search image for them!

We were able to locate two species of pipefish, the target S. scovelli and the chain pipefish S. lousianae, and Ja’Kaila and Cyrus got to get up close and personal with some common IRL inhabitants.