Click to view attachmentATLANTA - A weedy sea dragon at the Georgia Aquarium has something to celebrate this Father's Day. One of the rare creatures is pregnant for only the third time ever at a U.S. aquarium, aquarium officials said. But don't look for the expectant mom — dads carry the eggs in this family.

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The aquarium's sea dragon has about 70 fertilized eggs — which look like small red grapes — attached to his tail. He is expected to give birth in early to mid-July, said Kerry Gladish, a biologist at the aquarium.

Sea dragons, sea horses and pipe fish are the only species where the male carries the eggs, Gladish said. Sea dragon pregnancies are rare because researchers don't know what gets them in the mood to mate.

"We know there's something biologically or environmentally that triggers them to want to reproduce, but in the aquarium world, we're not sure what that is," Gladish said.

The aquarium recently changed the lighting and thinned out the plants in the sea dragons' tank to give them room to court each other.

The aquarium has seven of the 18-inch sea dragons, which resemble Dr. Seuss characters with long aardvark-like snouts, colorful sea horse bodies and multiple paddle-like fins.

During mating, the female lays dozens of eggs and then transfers them to the male's tail.

In the wild, the survival rate for sea dragon babies is low, but in captivity it's about 60 percent, Gladish said. The fish is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's list of threatened species, mostly because of pollution and population growth in its native Australia.

Only about 50 aquariums worldwide have sea dragons.

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That is awesome! I saw a sea dragon at the Tampa Aquarium once, except this one had more 'leaves' than the one in the article. They look like they swam through a seaweed field. Very neat.

That is great, these have always been one of my favorite sea creatures.

We're hitting Atlanta the second week in July, and hopefully the babies will be born by then...One of our favorite trips is to the Atlanta Aquarium, awesome place

Georgia Aquarium you mean?

Awful place with poor animal care and poor education (which breaks its licensing laws) and a poor record with animal health. It is very badly thought of in zoological circles.

Cool article Ciss
What a beautiful sea animal

I'm talking about the aquarium in Atlanta that has only been opened a few years..The only problem I read about it was when the whales had a disease and passed away...As a matter of fact, we saw the first one that was sick, separated from others, right before he passed..I have no idea how it is thought of in your line of work, but as a spectator it was always well worth a trip.

Yep that would be Georgia Aquarium. It was not just the Whale sharks (which is a totally inappropriate animal for captivity anyway), they mishandled many animals and it is a disgracefully run facility. I wholly recommend boycotting it.

Really? Besides the whale shark thing, do you have any other evidence of this? Because I love aquariums and I've always wanted to visit this one, but if they mishandle their animals then I don't know if I could support them by going.

I would definitely boycott it if I know exactly how they are mishandling the animals, and why you mentioned the way it was run... The first time we saw the whale shark that was ill, people were asking what happened to it. I didn't hear the explanation, as we continued on our way. But one side of it's body looked very diseased. If I'm not mistaken this happened to a few of the other whales also.

Yes it was diseased. It is animal that moves 10000km in its life and 100's km in a day, when you enclose them whale sharks come under stress they can not tolerate and suffer severely from illness. But the aquarium owners don't care.
They also break the law with regards to the educational standard in the aquarium.

Sadly US zoological laws for captive animals are still sub-standard and very dated and animals that should not be kept are allowed to be and the AZA still licenses facilities that would be closed and the owners arrested if it was in the UK (like Seaworld and Miami Seaquarium).

Well they have failed to implement educational standards which are legally required. They keep cetaceans and keep them in (like most places) in tanks that are no way near large enough for the animals needs and the keeping of cetaceans is banned in numerous countries now due an inability to keep them humanely (most places even keep them in chlorine which damages them severely). They managed to kill both of there great hammerheads (and in my former work place of Mote Marine lab they were not happy about that as they had previously been there and left in good health).

Oh wow. Do you think they are keeping these animals in these conditions knowingly? Like they know that the tank is too small but don't care. Or do you think that maybe they are a little ignorant on the subject of marine life care and are learning from their mistakes? Maybe they dont know they are doing anything wrong.

What bothers me, is if this aquarium is not meeting it's standards, then why are other aquariums still loaning their animals to it...That part doesn't make sense...I did read that there are between 100,000 and 120,000 animals there, with 500 different species..

It is because AZA standards are pretty low sadly and the animal requirements specified by them are way below standard. But some aquaria make the effort to offer better living conditions, some don't, but like most (not all) Georgia is run for profit, you are better visiting some where like Monterey Bay Aquarium.
I know the whale shark idea was thought of when the aquariums owner saw them in Japan and I never believe taking idea's for animal care in aquariums is good from Japan because their animal care standards are truly awful.

I will actually be at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in a week, I am so excited! Well then I suppose I will sidestep the Georgia Aquarium then.

Also, I know what you mean about the standards in Japanese aquariums. I used to live in Japan and I remember going to an aquarium as a small girl, I remember the dolphin show and how dirty the auditorium was.