M
Dried seahorses
confiscated at San
Francisco Interna-
tional Airport were
shipped from Asia,
where each year
millions are ground
up for traditional
medicines. Biologists
worry about illegal
trade and other
threats depleting
wild populations.
HIPPOCAMPUS KELLOGGI
CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF
SCIENCES, SAN FRANCISCOMiguel Correia pointed at the seafloor. I stared and
shook my head. He jabbed a gloved finger at the spot.
I swam closer and stared harder. Sand. Algae. Rocks.
A spiral of sea cucumber poop. I exhaled a swarm of
bubbles in frustration.¶ And then, suddenly, there
it was, tucked into the seaweed right where I’d been
looking: a three-inch-tall, long-snouted seahorse,
Hippocampus guttulatus, muddied yellow with
a smattering of dark freckles and a mane of skin
filaments. Later that dive I spotted (also with help)
its short-snouted cousin, Hippocampus hippocam-
pus, the other seahorse native to this coastal lagoon
in Portugal called Ria Formosa. ¶ Every continent
but Antarctica has varieties of these fabled fish in
its coastal waters. Worldwide, scientists recognize
46 species, the smallest no bigger than a lima bean,
the largest the size of a baseball glove. And that
number is likely to rise: Four new species were
named in just the past decade.76 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC