SEAHORSES ARE UNDER THREAT

Consider it or not, once I was little you would go into virtually any memento store in Florida and discover enormous baskets stuffed with a whole lot of dried seahorses on the market subsequent to bleached sand {dollars}, sea urchins, corals and seashells. Fortunately, we don’t typically see these wasteful souvenirs in the US. 

Nevertheless, there are nonetheless enormous markets elsewhere on this planet for lifeless and dried seahorses, particularly on the black marketplace for unlawful wildlife merchandise. Poachers accumulate seahorses and promote them for conventional medicines in Asia.  

There are 47 identified species of seahorses across the globe. Fourteen have been found since 2000. They stay in shallow coastal seas, in temperate, subtropical and tropical areas. Seahorses can sometimes be present in seagrass meadows, coral reefs, underneath mangroves on the prop roots and connected to sargassum floating within the open ocean. 

There are three species of seahorses within the continental United States: the pygmy or dwarf seahorse Hippocampus zostera, the lined seahorse Hippocampus erectus, and the Brazilian or long-snout seahorse Hippocampus reidi. The dwarf seahorse is likely one of the smallest seahorse species and grows as much as 1 ½ inches. Pipefish are very intently associated to seahorses, and it’s fairly apparent while you have a look at them as a result of they mainly appear like stretched-out seahorses — or possibly seahorses appear like curled-up pipefish?  What you may not know is that the trumpetfish and cornetfish are additionally shut cousins to seahorses.  

Seahorses and their cousins all have an extended snout that’s used to seize prey by pivot feeding – an upward rotation of the pinnacle, adopted by suction to attract the prey into the snout. They’re ambush predators that primarily eat small crustaceans like shrimp, copepods, amphipods and larval or juvenile fish. One of many distinctive traits of seahorses is that the male carries the newborn fry by gestation and delivery. The male has a brood pouch with an oviduct, the place the feminine locations the eggs and they’re fertilized. The male will carry the eggs in his pouch whereas they develop. After a number of weeks, the newborn seahorse fry are born alive and able to fend for themselves. 

Most feminine seahorses select a mate and stick with that mate for a very long time. That is particularly obvious when you’ve seahorses within the aquarium. Whereas I used to be an intern at Mote Marine Aquarium in Sarasota, I took care of the seahorse room. Virtually daily the mature feminine seahorse would meet with the male on the backside of the tank, and they might dance and spin to the highest of the aquarium.

Sadly, seahorses are underneath menace, particularly attributable to habitat loss everywhere in the world. In addition they stay on coral reefs which can be in world decline. If you’re an aquarium keeper, attempt to purchase animals which have been captive-bred. Seahorses and different fish bred on aquaculture farms usually tend to survive than wild-caught and are accustomed to the meals out there at native fish shops. This helps your native financial system and ensures that extra animals usually are not being wild-caught in locations that won’t have authorities oversight, or worse, use harmful fishing practices, like cyanide or explosives.  

And eventually, if you end up on trip you may even see coral, or coral jewellery, seashells or dried seahorses and different animals. Please keep away from shopping for these merchandise because it incentivizes the tourism trade to maintain acquiring these animals on the market.