In the 1970s and 80s, children would love to see the DC Comics’ fictional superhero “Aquaman” riding a giant seahorse, communicating with the fabled creatures through mental telepathy in his epic adventures in the deep.
Depicted in Greek mythology as a sea monster with the head and body of a horse and a dragon-like tail, the hippocampus or hippocamp, also called hippokampos, is a fascinating sea creature. It is commonly called as seahorse.
Seahorses, however, are not mythical creatures as they are very real—and are actually endangered fish species.
Flagship species
Project Seahorse, a marine conservation group dedicated to securing healthy and well-managed marine ecosystems, consider seahorses as a flagship species for a wide range of marine conservation issues.
There are 46 known seahorse species, 10 of which naturally occur in the Philippines.
Of its total known species, 14 are threatened by fishing and habitat loss.
Project Seahorse estimates that around 70 million seahorses are caught globally in unmanaged fisheries activities each year.
Quirky fish
Seahorses have an uncommon trait wherein only the males get pregnant.
They are monogamous and form faithful pairs with lengthy parental care, live in temperate and tropical seas, and dwell on corals, seagrasses, mangroves and estuaries.
As such, they are important predators on bottom-dwelling animals.
While they are voracious predators, seahorses have no stomach or teeth. They feed by sucking their prey in through a tubular snout and pass it through an inefficient digestive system, the Project Seahorse said.
Protected by law
Two laws protect seahorses in the country—the Republic Act (RA) 8550 of May 17, 2001, or the Fisheries Code of the Philippines, and its amendatory law, RA 10654, or the Amended Fisheries Code; and RA 9147, or the Wildlife Act.
On the other hand, they may be protected by local ordinances, particularly, those within fish sanctuaries and marine protected areas.
On a bigger scale, the National Integrated Protected Areas System Act, which protects wildlife within declared protected areas and national parks in the country, provides seahorses stronger protection.
Widely distributed, shrinking population
Seahorses are widely distributed throughout the Philippine marine waters either in mangroves, seagrass beds, sandy sediments and hard/soft corals, said Marivic Pajaro, executive director of Daluhay Daloy ng Buhay Inc. based in Baler, Aurora province.
Pajaro, whose nongovernment organization implements ridge-to-reef approach to environmental conservation, said many anecdotal accounts have indicated that the country had an abundant stock of seahorses, especially before the 1990s when the pressure from overfishing and habitat degradation took its toll on their population.
Pajaro was the project leader and later coordinator in Bohol when Project Seahorse evolved and scaled up its interventions at a national scale
Seahorses are extremely vulnerable from both natural threats and anthropogenic or environmental pollutants, Pajaro told the BusinessMirror via e-mail on April 22.
“Seahorses have low mobility, low population density, small home ranges, low fecundity or fertility,” she said.
Not food, but medicine
Pajaro said seahorses can be edible. But interviews with fishers during her research revealed that they are not palatable as food because of their bony plates rather than fleshy meat.
Nevertheless, seahorses are exploited as they fetch a good price.
They are exported either dried for use for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), or curios/souvenirs, and caught live for ornaments or aquarium display.
“I have seen several fishers keep a couple of dried seahorses for use as folk medicine. They grill the dried seahorses and then pulverize them to be mixed in soup or water to treat ailments, especially asthma,” she said.
Prey and predator; ecosystem function
Seahorses are mainly carnivores, who wait to ambush their prey, Pajaro said.
“As the prey comes close, they suck them with their long snouts. [Their] food are small crustaceans, fish fry and other planktonic invertebrates, small enough to fit into their snout,” she explained.
Since seahorse adults can camouflage and are unpalatable, they don’t have many known predators, Pajaro added.
“They have been reportedly found in stomachs of crabs [just the tails], sea turtles and water birds. However, the juveniles are great targets for food by other fishes and marine animals that are planktivorous, or those that eat organisms that are carried by tides and currents,” she said.
As such, Pajaro noted, seahorses have strong relationships with their habitats.
As such, they are good icons to call attention to the marine conservation issues that need to be addressed. Hence, protecting them can benefit many other marine species and ecosystems, she added.
PHL a seahorse exporter
In the Philippines, 1.7 million seahorses are captured every year, according to the 2019 Fisheries Centre Research Report on the catch and trade of seahorses in the Philippines, that was prepared by the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
The illegal trade of seahorses in the country continued, mostly for export to Asian countries, despite the blanket ban on the trade of rare, threatened and endangered species, including seahorses, imposed by the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (DA-BFAR) with the passage of the Fisheries Code, along with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)-listed species.
Last March, 15 kilograms of dried seahorses valued at P460,000 was confiscated by authorities in Bacolod City.
Targeted species
Seahorses are targeted species like the pangolins, the most trafficked animal in the world that is hunted for its meat and scales.
In July 2020, wildlife trade monitoring network, Traffic, in a report titled, “Seahorse Trade Dynamics from Africa to Asia,” by Simone Louw and Markus Burgener, revealed the alarming scenario in the trade of seahorses.
Using data extracted from the CITES Trade Database that documented volumes of seahorse trade and the countries involved, the report revealed that 11,259,098 seahorses have been exported over a 10-year period from 2008 to 2018.
In the same 10-year period, 15,722,838 is the estimated total global number of imported among the species.
Meanwhile, the top five countries or territories, accounting for 99 percent of the global reported exports in dried seahorses, were Thailand (71 percent), followed by mainland China (15 percent), Senegal (10 percent), Malaysia (2 percent) and Hong Kong (1 percent).
Fast disappearing
In the Philippines, seahorses are fast disappearing in the wild.
“When was the last time the average diver saw a wild seahorse in the Philippines? Stocks have been severely depleted by illegal fishing,” Gregg Yan, founder of Best Alternatives, said.
Seahorses, according to Yan, have been targeted by TCM trade in at least 500 years.
“As many as 20 million seahorses and pipefish are plucked out of the world’s seas yearly, with up to 4 million coming from the Philippines, which was a top exporter to China,” he lamented.
Documenting various coastal fisheries throughout the country, Yan told the BusinessMirror via Messenger on April 29 that many small-scale fishers passively collect seahorses, which have two things going against them—they swim slowly and they are attracted to light, which make night fishing simple and effective.
Best alternatives available
Yan believes there are better, if not best alternatives, even to the “alternative medicine” that are pushing iconic animals around the world to the brink of extinction.
Best Alternatives, an environment group, advocates for science-based medicinal alternatives to ground-up seahorses.
“We’re not here to contest the effectiveness of [TCM], which has been evolving for hundreds of years,” Yan pointed out.
“What we’re saying is that because the raw materials needed to make certain TCM products, like tiger bones, pangolin scales or dried seahorses are both legally protected and are fast running out, then we logically must start switching to sustainable and usually more affordable alternatives before these animals disappear completely,” he explained.
Protecting seahorses; trade regulations
To protect and conserve the seahorses, and address illegal wildlife trade, the DA-BFAR said it promotes the protection of coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangrove forests through collaborations with the DA’s Biodiversity Management Bureau.
“One of the priorities of DA-BFAR is the development of seahorse-specific management measures through the assistance of scientific authorities and the Philippine Aquatic Red List Committee, subject to the availability of funds,” the DA-BFAR told the BusinessMirror via e-mail on May 5.
Some conservation actions for seahorses include the no-take Marine Protected Areas and the voluntary adoption of a 10-centimeter minimum size limit by fishers.
Meanwhile, the Aquatic Wildlife Regulatory Section of DA-BFAR’s Fisheries Regulatory and Licensing Division that is responsible for CITES-listed species regulates the scientific researches involving aquatic wildlife.
DA-BFAR added that it implements strict border control measures in airports, seaports and land-based checkpoints to regulate the trade of aquatic wildlife and fishery products.
For its part, Daluhay’s Pajaro said saving seahorses from extinction needs an integrated management approach that will require the help and support of stakeholders.
She agreed with DA-BFAR on the need for the no-take marine protected areas and the setting of limits to the size and volume by using selective fishing gear.
Thus, the stakeholders—the fishers, buyers, BFAR, local government agencies, academe/experts—need to be on board in the policy and decision-making, and in the monitoring, evaluation of these policies and their enforcement, she said.
Pajaro warned that while seahorses may appear unimportant, if they become locally extinct it will upset the balance of nature, and can cause other organisms to suffer.
“Several studies have indicated that a species richness in an area enhances ecosystem productivity and stability. The extinction of any species is an irreversible loss of the Earth’s biological richness, which the future generations will no longer enjoy,” she said.
Thus, Pajaro said the extinction of seahorses will mean that its use to traditionally treat human ailments and its potential for new cures and drugs will be gone forever.
Hence, seahorses can no longer contribute to important sources of income for subsistence fishers
As they are related to mythical stories, unless their trade regulations are observed, they may soon become nothing but a myth.