Longtime contributor Jennifer S. Holland is
writing a book about dog intelligence, due out
in 2023. David Liittschwager has published
seven books, including A World in One Cubic Foot.Commercial fishing
operations scoopup at least 76 million
seahorses a year.Some 80 countries
are involved intrading them.
is a professor at its Institute for the Oceans and
Fisheries, and the Zoological Society of London.
Such a knowledge gap, blamed in part on the
dearth of scientists who study seahorses, is espe-
cially problematic for a fish that’s so exploited.
Project Seahorse estimates that commercial
fishing operations scoop up at least 76 million
seahorses a year; some 80 countries are involved
in trading them. “Fishermen used to throw them
back,” notes Healy Hamilton, chief scientist of
NatureServe, a Virginia-based conservation
group, “but now in many places you’ll see a
[buyer] on the dock just waiting to take them.”
While some fishermen target seahorses, it’s
bycatch that’s devastating seahorse populations,
says Project Seahorse’s program manager, Sarah
Foster. Global exports should have edged toward
sustainability after 2004, when worries about
extensive international trade prompted new reg-
ulations under the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and
Flora (CITES). “Unfortunately, it seems that most
trade in dried seahorses has just moved under-
ground,” Vincent says. The good news is that the
live trade is relying more on captive breeding,
reducing pressure on wild populations, she says.
Field surveys and CITES records have exposed
Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, as the
main supplier of seahorses, and indicate that
two West African countries, Guinea and Sene-
gal, have increased their exports. Hong Kong is
by far the top importer, with heavy shipments
also to Taiwan and mainland China. Most of
the demand for seahorses reflects their use in
traditional medicines. Vendors promise, for
example, that dried seahorses boost virility,
have anti-inflammatory properties, and can
treat everything from asthma to incontinence.TO GET A SENSE of the pressures on seahorses, I
visited a warehouse at the California Academy
of Sciences, where Hamilton rummaged through
one of many boxes of plastic bags bulging with
brittle skeletons that had been confiscated at
San Francisco International Airport. There were
hundreds, maybe thousands, of fish, “represent-
ing just a year’s worth of what was stopped at a
single port,” she told me.
Occasionally officials seize a supersize haul:
In 2019 in Lima, Peru, more than 12 million
dried seahorses were confiscated from a sin-
gle Asia-bound ship—a load worth some six
million dollars on the black market. But more
often, seahorse shipments escape detection,
Hamilton said, with incalculable losses to each
exploited species.
On a positive note, in 2020 the Portuguese
government created two small marine protected
areas within Ria Formosa to act as seahorse
sanctuaries. It’s good news, but experts say the
key to maintaining seahorse numbers is better
fisheries management, with severe limits and
even bans on trawling. Market demand doesn’t
have to be a death sentence for Hippocampus,
Foster says—“if we can get CITES rules to work
as intended to support sustainable legal trade.”
Meanwhile, Asia’s consumption of seahorse
products could shrink on its own “as younger,
more progressive-minded people move away
from using wildlife in traditional ways,” Foster
says. The traditional-medicine community ulti-
mately shares a goal with conservationists, she
says. Traders and users often are vilified, “but in
the end we all have incentives to keep seahorses
from disappearing.”
Acting on those incentives matters because
“there is absolutely no way seahorses can sus-
tain today’s level of exploitation,” Hamilton
said from her perch overlooking the warehouse
shelves. “And people need to know: We are
headed towards a world bereft of too many of
these extraordinary fishes.” j84 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC