Featured Observation: New Holland Seahorse by Dunshea Diving

This month’s featured observation comes from New South Wales in southeastern Australia. iSeahorse user dunshea_diving managed to spot and take this great photograph of Hippocampus whitei, the New Holland seahorse.

This photo is a great example of something that many find surprising about seahorses — the fact that some species tend to be attracted to and do well on anthropogenic structures (those made by people).

Often times seahorses wind up on shark nets, docks and pilings, shellfish traps, and discarded fishing nets. It’s not yet clear how this behavior affects their reproductive success, but they definitely always try to find something they can easily ‘grab onto’ with their prehensile tails.

The New Holland seahorse is currently listed as Data Deficient on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, although this assessment is outdated. Current efforts by Project Seahorse and the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Seahorse, Pipefish and Stickleback Specialist Group hope to see updated assessments done for all seahorses and their relatives (over 340 species!) by the end of 2016. Observations like this one give us valuable information when assessing the conservation status of these unique fish, and will thereby hopefully contribute to healthier oceans.

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Publicado el 03 de febrero de 2016 a las 10:02 PM por projectseahorse projectseahorse

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