  We present a new kind of defect in Abelian Projections, stemming from
pointlike zeros of second order. The corresponding topological quantity is the
Hopf invariant pi_3(S^2) (rather than the winding number pi_2(S^2) for magnetic
monopoles). We give a visualisation of this quantity and discuss the simplest
non-trivial example, the Hopf map. Such defects occur in the Laplacian Abelian
gauge in a non-trivial instanton sector. For general Abelian projections we
show how an ensemble of Hopf defects accounts for the instanton number.
