Seahorses

…. on the surface nothing shows;/underneath it is fat and fecund.                                                                                 

from Sea-Lives by Fleur Adcock (NZ poet)

The common big-belly seahorse (Hippocampus Abdominalis) found in our seas is one of the largest sea-horse species, a giant at 35cm.  Seahorses swim in an upright position by a sculling motion of the pectoral fins on the sides of the head.  Undulations of the dorsal fin enable the fish to swim faster with the body at an angle, but they are one of the slowest swimmers on the planet.  Seahorses can, also, move through seaweed using their prehensile tail.  They are more active at dusk and during the night.  Seahorses challenge gender and gender roles as it is males who carry and give birth to babies.  Baby seahorses are known as fry.  Once born they are on their own, If they hang around home too long they risk being eaten by their father.  They spend the first two to three weeks of their lives drifting along in the plankton layer of the ocean.  Seahorses suck food (brine shrimp) through their snouts constantly.

There’s always a crowd round their tank at Kelly Tarlton’s Seahorse Kingdom in Auckland.  Children and, let’s be honest, adults, are fascinated and enamored by these small sea creatures. We used to have them at Enclosure Bay on the northern coast of Waiheke.  Sadly they haven’t been seen in quite a while.  A global decline in some seahorse species is partly the result of unsustainable fishing practices.  They are not caught for the dinner table but are ground up for medicines, or dried and sightless become souvenirs.  Many end up in home aquariums.  Their typical habitats, seagrass, seaweed, mangroves and coral reefs are globally under threat including around the coast of our motu.

For decades our coastal kelp beds have been disappearing due to the imbalance between big snapper and kelp grazing kina.  Rectifying this imbalance with reduced take of old breeding snapper and re-seeding kelp beds (as is underway at present with the support of the Waiheke Marine Project) will bring back our seaweed.  Hopefully some wandering seahorse fry will again find a safe home on our coast to give joy to divers, and future generations of islanders – young and old.