1. Did you know that the Latin family name of the sea horse, hippocampus, translates to horse seamonster? They sure don’t look very scary to me. Their size are ranging from tiny 1.5 cm up to 35 cm. 2.
2. They don’t have any stomach and because of the missing stomach these horses needs to eat all the time. To be exact they need to find at least 3000 tiny shrimps every day or they would die of starvation.
3. The male seahorse really takes his daddy role very serious. In this relationship the male are the one to carry all eggs in his pouch. Of all the eggs only one of thousand survives to an adult size. Some studies shows that they are extremely faithful to each other. Once they find a sea horse partner in their taste they stick with each other for the rest of their life. How romantic!
4. To great exercise can kill this little creatures so mostly they are sitting on the same coral relaxing and eating. Except to gain too much weight the only thing this guys need to worry about is the hungry crabs. If the dwarf sea horse needs to run from the crab he faces a problem, since his horse powers only can create a top speed of 1.5 meter per hour…
5. The seahorse are endangered by over fishing and habitat destruction. The Chinese medicine market has a huge responsibility since they convinced the chines people that seahorses cure impotence, wheezing and pain. Which has non-scientific proof. 20 million seahorses are estimated to been taken from the sea by this reason every year.
The fishing of the endangered seahorse has been controlled by CITES since 2004. CITES is a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Sadly enough Norway, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia didn’t sign the law. Support CITES and other ocean fighters that supports our ocean with knowledge among the local people.
Denise’s Pygmy Seahorse at the divesite Umbrella
