Taxonomic notes: The 1996 and 2000 Red Lists included H. erinaceus. This is now considered a synonym of H. angustus.

Very little is known about the species that is now recognised as H. angustus.

The species has been trawled from depths of 3-63 m (Lourie et al. 1999) and has also been collected from algal reef habitat from 12-25 m depth (Kuiter 2000). This species may be particularly susceptible to decline. All seahorse species have vital parental care, and many species studied to date have high site fidelity (Perante et al. 2002, Vincent et al. in review), highly structured social behaviour (Vincent and Sadler 1995), and relatively sparse distributions (Lourie et al. 1999). The importance of life history parameters in determining response to exploitation has been demonstrated for a number of species (Jennings et al. 1998).

Unknown.

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This species is known to be caught as by-catch in trawls in northern Australia (S. Lourie, pers. comm.).

• 5.4.4 Unintentional effects: (large scale) [harvest]

H. angustus was moved under the Australian Wildlife Protection Act in 1998. Further research on this species is needed. It is listed on CITES Appendix II.

The species assessed as H. angustus in 1996 is now recognized as H. subelongatus. In assessing the species now identified as H. angustus we found that appropriate data on biology and ecology, habitat, abundance and distribution are not available for this species. Further research is needed.

• Jennings, S., Reynolds, J.D. and Mills, S.C. 1998. Life history correlates of responses to fisheries exploitation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B 265:333-339.
• Kuiter, R.H. 2000a. Seahorses, Pipefishes and their Relatives. A Comprehensive Guide to Syngnathiformes. TMC Publishing, Chorleywood, UK.
• Lourie, S.A., Vincent, A.C.J. and Hall, H.J. 1999. Seahorses: an identification guide to the world's species and their conservation. Project Seahorse, London, U.K.
• Perante, N.C., Pajaro, M.G., Meeuwig, J.J. and Vincent, A.C.J. 2002. Biology of a seahorse species Hippocampus comes in the central Philippines. Accepted by Journal of Fish Biology. 2001.
• Vincent, A.C.J. and Sadler, L.M. 1995. Faithful pair bonds in wild seahorses, Hippocampus whitei. Animal Behaviour 50: 1557-1569.
• Vincent, A.C.J., Evans, K.L., and Marsden, A.D. 2005. Home range behaviour of the monogamous Australian seahorse, Hippocampus whitei. Environmental Biology of Fishes 72: 1–12.