Update on seahorses

Despite Thierry Schmidt’s successes and his opinion that keeping seahorses presents no special difficulties, I am deluged by letters from home aquarists, public aquarists, and aquaculturists reporting the difficulties of seahorse keeping. It is irresponsible to encourage seahorse breeding without warning of the difficulties and the high rate of failure.

An editorial note commented that seahorses are exploited for medicines and aphrodisiacs and for curios. This is indeed true and seahorse numbers are declining drastically as a consequence. But we find that the aquarium trade also puts great pressure on seahorse populations. Much of the problem is that seahorses tend to do very badly in captivity, yet home aquarists continue to buy replacements in order to try again to “breed them to save the species”.

 

Vincent, A.C.J. (1995). Update on seahorses. Seascope 12: 3 http://spectrum-sitecore-spectrumbrands.netdna-ssl.com/~/media/UPG/Files/Instant Ocean/SeaScope/Volume 12_1995.pdf