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  • I'm in South Australia, where winter has arrived early, buying gale force winds in what was supposed to be summer.

  • The seas have been wanting impossible to dive in, and I'm worried that the leafy sea dragon, the weak creature I so desperately want to see, will forever remain a mythical creature.

  • Overnight, the windows dropped and Carrie and I have to make the most of this window in the bad weather to be a fish.

  • There's lots of these little lives down here.

  • He's a cool little fish surrounding grips, growing their teeth.

  • With that close, they sound like no women grumbling pretty little fish than that for me, the most visual fish down here.

  • Levi's have relatively small territories, rarely bigger than 10 meters squared.

  • But the recent violent currents and tides means that the sea dragons could have been carried anywhere along this coast.

  • Once out of the eel grass habitat, they're vulnerable.

  • That's if they've survived the power of the storm.

  • Oh my goodness main.

  • But then Kerry points out what initially looks like a clump of seaweed.

  • But in fact, it's an old friend.

  • I'd like to introduce you.

  • This is one of my dragons have been following that is just one fish.

  • It's hard to believe it's official.

  • I was expecting a much harder run.

  • I thought we were gonna be swimming around for analyst before we actually saw one way right underneath the jetty.

  • Freddie.

  • He's a lovely out of his territory.

  • I was expecting to find it much further out than what we are finally in the shallows like this is incredible.

  • But it is one of the most one lately flamboyant animals I've ever set my eyes on just absolutely exquisite, hardly looks like a fish at all.

  • And I guess that's the whole idea.

  • You can kind of see the seals in it, but early sort of flaps and flanges these blowing flags, I guess.

  • Just take it to another level.

  • Oh, my goodness, May I'm happy with Maxim.

  • A cup believe I'm actually here.

  • Finally looking at a dragon, it seemed, for a while there we weren't even going to get in the water.

  • Leafy is really does exist, unlike its mythical namesake, and you can see where the dragon part the name comes from.

  • It looks every bit like a Chinese dragon.

  • How is but next In August, of 2007 say he's only about two years old now.

  • That's pretty impressive.

  • I mean, it is.

  • This is biggest.

  • They get until they get bigger.

  • They actually do get bigger.

  • Ax is about 16 to 18 inches.

  • Love.

  • Some actually get up to 600 millimeters, or about 24 inches or two feet long in the old scale.

  • And look at that.

  • When he goes into the suite, suddenly he vanishes.

  • And then that's the secret with the dragon.

  • It's all about context.

  • When you see them out in the open, they're very obvious.

  • As soon as they move into the weed, they vanish.

  • I have got so many questions for those folks back in the museum, I would say that the Sea Dragon is a uber specialist.

  • Leafy.

  • It's so perfectly adapted to basically hiding and help very looks just like it.

  • I mean, I'm amazed if you can see the guys so many people, you know they just don't see them.

  • It's that just beautifully camouflaged.

  • Yes, that does mean if they swim out into open water, they're toast.

  • So they have to stay in that in that area, and they become it's It's It's like a reinforcement, your specialized.

  • You're living in a certain place.

  • You want to get better and better and better and better and better, and you end up as you say, you're in a corner in evolutionary sense.

  • That ain't no corner.

  • That's a great place to be.

  • But of course, when when humans come on the scene and we start disrupting the system, we start taking help away.

  • We start impacting that very, very special kind of environment.

  • The problem is the accelerated rate of change that humans have brought to the picture.

  • So, yeah, the Porc dragon may well be a victim of its own success.

  • The only fish bits against the term obvious.

  • But even then that metal Kris, what's causing this animal to be up very suddenly maneuver around in the water.

  • But on the bright clear, you can see the dorsal fin pulsating way.

  • That's pretty much this fish is only mode of propulsion.

  • The other two friends that he has either side of the head they look a bit like, is there the picture of fence and they could kind of turn them on and turn them off.

  • They don't do that sort of flat breaks calls state as it were, by just supple operations of different fins, Dragon can maneuver itself around.

  • I guess it's a bit like flying a helicopter.

  • These fish really, really difficult to remove from the world to disappoint the desire to have one in a fish tank.

  • I can't imagine ever, ever removing a fish like this from its habitat.

  • It blooms hair.

  • Come and have a look up close tail.

  • You can actually see the dimples on the bottom of the tail.

  • Here for miss years grew that exit left behind.

  • So Max may have fathered as many as 250 babies this year.

  • And as we're returning to the jetty, I spot another leafy, which turns out to being Max's partner.

  • You.

  • This is Max's girlfriend Way lost four months ago, a little bit older so that she's a little bit thicker and a little bit chunkier in the body.

  • Glad we found her.

  • Great to see that you're still alive.

  • If Carrie's right Max is have babies this year, then finding Michelle, his partner, means that there's an even greater chance of us finding the juvenile fees that triggered the first When I spotted anyway.

  • We're gonna protect this area because we don't have this.

  • We don't have dragons, but our air is running out.

  • So if we want baby dragons, they have to wait to the next.

  • Well, we got our dragons absolutely fantastic.

  • I know you can't see it, but I'm smiling from eating here.

  • Carrie, thank you very much.

  • That's brilliant.

  • Absolutely fantastic.

I'm in South Australia, where winter has arrived early, buying gale force winds in what was supposed to be summer.

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