After 14 years of trying, the Waikiki Aquarium has announced the successful breeding of weedy seadragons.

Only a handful of aquariums have been able to breed the delicate relative of seahorses and pipefishes.

“This is an incredible achievement for our team since starting our seadragon husbandry program 14 years ago,” Waikiki Aquarium Director Andrew Rossiter said Monday in a news release. “Weedy seadragons are notoriously difficult to breed in captivity, and we couldn’t be more excited.”

A native of the cool waters of the south coast of Australia and Tasmania, the weedy seadragon appears to be a cross between a seahorse and a bit of seaweed. Like a seahorse, they have small fins to propel them, but they more often seem to drift in the water column — like a seaweed.

As part of a mating ritual, seadragons perform a spinning dance, snout to snout, and move up and down in the water column where the eggs are transferred from the female to the male.

Like seahorses, the males carry the eggs on the tail, where the eggs incubate and hatch in about six weeks.

The Waikiki Aquarium said its weedy seadragons accomplished a successful egg transfer June 11, and the male carried the eggs until a fully formed juvenile hatched Aug. 2.

The baby seadragon is now 4 inches in length and is being monitored and cared for behind the scenes. Visitors to the aquarium can see the newest addition from a live camera feed in the aquarium galleries.