斑马海马是一条似乎不应该存在的鱼，但确实如此仅仅。What we mean by that is that there are examples of seahorses in the wild with perfect black and white stripes, one species is even namedHippocampus zebra，但是由于某种原因，潜水员很少见到这些，而且在水族馆的爱好中都不存在！
If you know where most of theLennardi扭曲andRainfordia bassletscome from, then you won’t be surprised to learn that Ocean Reefs Marine Aquariums is the source for the first new specimens of zebra seahorses in dozens of years. Sure there have been a few one off specimens collected on both coasts of Australia and they’ve been spotted in Papua New Guinea as well but the two pairs fished up by Simon Hawke are the first, well-documented zebra seahorses in modern times.
Interestingly, there are two species of seahorses that have very bold black and white zebra striping,Hippocampus zebra来自澳大利亚东部海岸，以及Hippocampus montebelloensis来自澳大利亚的西海岸。简化马特ers, some taxonomists consider the montbello seahorse to be a synonym of海马斑马，因此，我们将简单地假设这些是以非洲哺乳动物命名的海马。
This is not the first time that Simon has collected the zebra seahorse but it’s been around 15 years since he collected just one, and this time he discovered a curious habitat of drifting seaweed with four specimens! This is a strange observation because the last we checked, most seaweeds are greens, reds and brown colors but it turns out that the zebra seahorse is uniquely adapted to live among the arms of black and white crinoids or feather stars as noted by澳大利亚鱼类。
对于盐水水族馆的爱好，两对斑马海马的收藏是一个非常令人兴奋的发展，因为如您所知，海马是最容易繁殖的海洋鱼之一，谁不想拥有斑马条纹海马坦克？The one reservation we have is that seahorses are known to adapt to their environment, changing their color and pattern to match and blend in with their host organism such as sponges or coral, but nothing says that you couldn’t give the next generation of zebra seahorses some artificial zebra striped ornaments to encourage that bold appearance.
非常感谢西蒙·霍克（Simon Hawke）用真正的新颖和独特的东西加入了异国海洋鱼类的世界，并恭喜您找到了一些标本来激发盐水水族馆鱼类育种者的想象，我们期待更多地了解这些非常特殊的鱼类在不远的将来。
