The Mid Kent College Level 1 Land-based studies students are raising money and awareness for The Seahorse Trust! They are selling a range of treats from delicious cakes to fancy phone charms! So far they have raised an amazing £195.54 for the work, so please support them where you can check out our facebook page to see more.
Ade and his team at Kaleidoscope Aquatics Centre in Paignton, Devon has been raising funds for our work in his shop. Ade and his staff have always kindly had a collection tin in the shop and have raised several hundred pounds over the years, so a massive thank you to him and his customers.
Check out more on our Facebook page
Dear all, I would like to share a beautiful piece of film that was taken by our colleagues Gaynor and Marianne who are monitoring areas of the Costa Brava for the SILMAR project. As part of their studies they filmed and photographed these Spiny Seahorses only using ambient light so as to not disturb the seahorses. As you can see the video clearly shows an incredibly relaxed seahorse that is just moving with the wave action. This is a great piece of video as it shows clearly that if seahorses are approached properly and no light is used they remain very calm and relaxed. Kenna Eco Diving is part of the Seahorse Alliance which was set up to bring together like minded projects around the world to study seahorses in their natural environment.
Contact Gaynor and her team for top quality eco diving and thank you to them for sending us this video.
http://www.kennaecodiving.net/eco-escala-guide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGbqbvU5Rys&feature=em-share_video_user
Just to update everyone on the tagging project at Studland we have changed our approach in the last two years and although it is called a tagging project we no longer use tags.(we will change the name soon) Right from the start we have been refining our techniques and knowledge on how to identify seahorses in the wild (and captivity) and slowly we perfected the photo identification process, which means we no longer have to handle seahorses or put a numbered tag on their necks. We know putting tags on seahorses does them no harm but we wanted to minimise contact with the seahorses to as little as possible. We now photograph the seahorses (without flash as this is illegal) and take pictures of either side of the head. When we get back to the office we look for clusters of patterns in the spots on the head and match them up with our extensive photo database which is part of the National Seahorse database run by The Seahorse Trust. It has taken some time to perfect this technique but we are there and so for the last 2 years we have not used tags at all and relied on the photos.
There is more about this in our 5 Year Report on Studland on this website under downloads at https://www.theseahorsetrust.org/research.aspx
At the moment Lily is in Cambodia checking out the amazing seahorses and will be with Paul and the team from Marine Conservation Cambodia (MCC) and the volunteers from Projects Abroad (PA) next week. She will be quite a spectacle as she has taken her mermaids tail with her, so will give the locals and the seahorses quite a shock.
Don’t forget you can sign up to help in the seahorse research in Cambodia by visiting the Projects Abroad website. This year there will be the choice of a second site in the East of the country in the beautiful Kep Province.
There is a link to MCC and Projects Abroad on the links page and Lily the Mermiads website is http://www.lilyshowgirl.com/real-mermaid.html
Page :Â …Â 10Â 11Â 12Â Â …Â Volunteers for the trust come in all shapes sizes and now it seems species. Lily the Mermaid has knidly offered to support the work of the trust through events. Lily is a professional Circus performer, fire dancer and Mermaid and she has kindly offered to make a small donation from any event she is booked to do specifically when booked in aid of The Seahorse Trust. Check out her website and see what lily and her fellow performers can do and if you are dong a fund raising event for the trust you can book Lily or her team (and don’t forget Percy the Seahorse dragon who can also be booked).
A team of volunteers from Kenna Eco Diving’s Marine Research and Conservation team http://www.kennaecodiving.net/eco-home found two adult Spiny Seahorses (Hippocampus guttulatus) at Cala Montgo in Spain. The team were doing an underwater litter clean up and came across the yellow seahorses. One was female but they could not identify the sex of the other one. Unusually the seahorses were out in the open and the survey team is not sure why; they are usually found in the seagrass beds (Posidonia oceanica) and had probably been disturbed.
These beautiful seahorses are becoming rarer in this area due to many reasons so it was good to find them.
Kenna Diving run projects using eco-diving volunteers and through their projects, they are beginning to understand more about this very fragile habitat and the myriad of species that live in their area.
At a meeting on the 24 February, DEFRAÂ announced the sites which are under consideration for the second tranche (T2) of Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) in England.
37 sites are being considered for inclusion in Tranche 2 which cover both inshore and offshore sites right around the English coast.
Studland Bay in Dorset is to be considered and so it falls on all of us to lobby hard to DEFRA on making this special area an MCZ. As I know more I will let you know how to lobby DEFRA but meanwhile please write to them, e-mail them, phone them, there details are on their website, anything to make this happen.
Studland is a very unique site for so many reasons but from our point of view it was home to a large group of Spiny seahorses. I say WAS because since 2009 to 2013 the number has dropped from 40 individuals down to 4, despite warnings that this was happening by The Seahorse Trust. which came from our survey work we have conducted there since 2008..
Simple measures could be put into place to alleviate one of the problems and that is the pressure on the seagrass bed (home to the seahorses) from anchors and moorings.
This year it is hoped that a few environmentally friendly moorings (EFM’s) are to be trialled in the bay and we hope to replace all moorings on the site with these moorings and to encourage visiting boats to use the EFM’s and not to drop their anchors. This will still allow boating activity but will take the pressure off the seagrass and hopefully will allow the seahorses to recover their numbers, if it is not too late.
The two native seahorses, Spiny and Short Snouted are fully protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act under schedule 5, section 9 and so this should not have happened. Sadly to date Marine Management Organisation (MMO) have not put into place any measures to protect the seahorses, despite them being informed of the problems, time and time again and they are the statutory authority whose job it is to enforce the law.
I have added below a link to the RYA showing where all the proposed tranches are going to be.
http://www.rya.org.uk/newsevents/news/Pages/SitesforsecondtrancheofMCZs.aspx
The Beautiful Seahorse Dargon, which can be rented by its makers for functions and to highlight this Year of the (Sea) Horse
Sea Lifes appeal to the Chinese community about the TCM trade
One of the studenst holding a dried seahorse so everyone rea;lises what the day was about.
The students were all shouting Happy New Year in Chinese and did an amazing job of highlighting the issues, thank you to them all for their help and enthusiasm.
There is some video on You Tube which can be accessed from our conservation day
We have just added some You Tube videos to the site on the conservation and Medicine trade pages. They are also available here.
Seahorses and the Chinese Medicine Trade                                    http://youtu.be/kCPYotfkYzg
Seahorse pair at Studland                                                               http://youtu.be/hIJxVpsq944
Seahorse                                                                                             http://youtu.be/xLfyrwj1QhM
Digging up Studland                                                               http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMm9g9ms8us
Camouflage in wild seahorses                                                             http://youtu.be/TlAiwrQEcME
We have now been researching seahorses at South Beach in Studland Bay for years and have made some incredible discoveries and increaseed our knowledge of seahorses around the British Isles. The 5 year report below outlines what we have been doing in Studlnad, its connection with the British Seahorse Survey and our recommendations.
This survey would not have been possible without all of our volunteers and the funding we have received from so many sources, especially the initial grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund who started us on our way. Thank you to one and all for your amazing support and we look forward to the next 5 years at this amazing site.
Once again our friends at GAC Logistics have kindly sent a donation towards our work here at the trust. Instead of sending out bottles of wines to their customers, they have made a donation to the trust on behalf of all of them and GAC. We are so grateful to the team at GAC and would like thank them so much for their amazing support, not just this Christmas but for the things they have done for us throughout the year.
Website:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â www.gac.com
Thank you to everyone who supports the trust, we aim to make a big difference to the environment and to preserve seahorses, our oceans and the environment for generations to come.
Happy Christmas and have a fantastic New Year
Best wishes from all at The Seahorse Trust
The Seahorse Trust was set up in 1999 as an umbrella organisation to preserve and conserve the natural world, especially the marine environment using Seahorses as our flagship species. We work in partnership through a Seahorse Alliance with many organisations and people from all over the world and it is this unique partnership that allows us to achieve so much in the conservation of seahorses and their environment for the future.
© 2024 The Seahorse Trust.
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