Tony and I have seen a horsefish at Long Beach on one occasion, languidly swimming near the sand in a fairly empty (at first glance) part of the beach. He was incredibly docile, and as we all gathered around him in awe, he merely flapped his pectoral fins at us gently. Unfortunately it was my third dive for the day and my camera battery had expired, so we had no photographic proof of this encounter.
Since then we’ve met horsefish on the SAS Good Hope in Smitswinkel Bay, and on Tivoli Reef, a newly discovered area east of Roman Rock lighthouse. These fish are often very calm and passive, which gives excellent opportunity to admire their very, very cute puckered up lips and steeply sloping foreheads. They are usually quite slow swimmers. When they extend their dorsal fins they’re quite impressive, and they can apparently grow to up to 75 centimetres in length. The ones I’ve seen were probably no more than 30 centimetres long.
There are two varieties found in Cape waters: the spine-nosed horsefish, and (we’ve only seen this one) the smooth horsefish (Congiopodus torvus). SURG has some horsefish information here and here.
