Behold the Seadragon

Well, we might have struck out on our attempt to see a Tasmanian devil.  But we did manage to see a different natural history wonder before leaving Tassie.

Weedy seadragons are an endemic fish of southern Australia, in the same family as seahorses.  And they are completely outrageous fish.

We had always heard that it was quite easy to see them at Kingston Beach, just south of Hobart.  But shame on us, we never quite got our act together to go look for one.  So this Sunday being a gorgeous day, and the end of our stay in Tasmania getting ever-closer, we rallied a group of friends and went to have a look.

We saw this one individual - you can tell that he's a male because of all those orange eggs on the underside of his tail.  Just as in the seahorses, it's the male that carries the eggs.

Just completely outrageous.  Being the biology geeks that we are, it was a great treat to see this fish in the wild, rather than in an aquarium.

So I think that we can now officially leave Tasmania satisfied.

And meanwhile, the next generation of snorkelers is in the wings.