NATURALIST'S 



N O T E BOOK 



Seahorse 

 Round-Up 



By Jamie Harris 



s 



k-^eahorses were once magical creatures 

 of myths and folklore, pulling the conch chariots 

 of Neptune, Poseidon and Triton. 



Today, seahorses are so elusive that even 

 experts have many questions. 



Associated more with tropical waters, 

 seahorses also are found in the temperate waters 

 of North Carolina, often transported north on 

 sargassum during storms from the Gulf of Mexico 

 and the Canbbean. 



Total worldwide seahorse population is 

 unknown, but experts estimate about 40 million 

 of the world's seahorses are taken from the 

 wild each year — sold as souvenir trinkets or for 

 Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). 



"That's a huge problem in the Caribbean," 

 saysjeff Smith, curator of aquatics and living 

 collections at the North Carolina Museum of 

 Natural Sciences. The unregulated harvest of 

 seahorses makes it difficult for researchers to 

 assess seahorse populations, he explains. 



But in Smith's exhibit at the Raleigh 

 museum, seahorses float through the water 

 effortlessly with their hummingbird-like fluttering 

 fins. Several move up and down the water column 

 with as many as 35 flutters per second. 



Camouflaged in the seagrass replicas, 

 seahorses wrap their prehensile tails tightly 

 around the blades to resist the current. Scientists 

 refer to a seahorse tail as "prehensile" because 

 it is used like a hand, helping them to hold onto 

 eelgrass when searching for food or onto each 

 other when mating. 



Continued 



LEFT: A male seahorse has a pouch, like a marsupial, 

 for protecting its young. 



COASTWATCH 



