If Stars were Fish by 9 year old Gabriela

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We are always pleased when the trusts younger supporters show what talent they have. We were sent this amazing poem by 9-year-old Gabriela last week, thank you

 If Stars Were Fish
 by Gabriela Cunha-Molina
 If stars were seahorses
If stars were seahorses
they would be so special!
They would travel from planet
to planet gliding, riding.
It would be so much fun to watch
they blend with the skies
Through black holes in the black sea
If stars were seahorses they would
never stop, I know!
They would keep on riding, gliding
Through the dark, dark blue sea!

Ban by Ebay in the sale of real seahorses

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The Seahorse Trust has made a great breakthorough by working with E-bay to ban the sale of real seahorses in the EU and America.

Mike Carson from the Global poicy department of E-bay has, after a request from the trust, said  ”we are aligning our enforcement to reflect the regulations in the EU and US. We are therefore prohibiting the sales of real seahorses on our EU sites and only allowing the sale of these items on the US site with domestic shipping”

http://www.thisisdevon.co.uk/Wildlife-charity-scores-eBay-victory-ongoing/story-17072279-detail/story.html

This is fantastic news and thank you to Mike and E-bay for their prompt action once we alerted them to the problem.

West African seahorses

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Have a look at this amazing footage from our colleagues at Project Seahorse. The footage is part of a joint investigation between ZSL’s Project Seahorse, Imperial College London, and the University of British Columbia (UBC) into West Africa’s burgeoning seahorse trade. Researcher Kate West was travelling on a local fishing boat off the Atlantic coast when she spotted and filmed seahorses in the wild, and spoke to local fishers about their interaction with the fascinating species.
https://www.zsl.org/conservation/news/first-ever-video-of-elusive-west-african-seahorse,1009,NS.html

The 2nd Syngnathid Biology International Symposium (Syng Bio 2013

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SYMPOSIUM ANNOUNCEMENT

The 2nd Syngnathid Biology International Symposium (Syng Bio 2013) will be held at the University of the Algarve (Faro, Portugal) from 25 to 28 March 2013. The Fisheries Biology and Hydrobiology Research Group of the Centre of Marine Sciences has the privilege to host this Symposium and is proud to have it in Portugal.

The symposium theme is “Multidisciplinary Approaches to Syngnathid Biology” and aims to embrace several aspects of seahorse, pipefish and seadragon biology. Oral and poster presentations across a broad range of topics will be considered for presentation, including: physiology, phylogenetics, phylogeography, genomics, sexual selection and mating systems, behaviour, syngnathid breeding programs and aquaculture, and conservation and management.

Please visit the Syng Bio 2013 Web site at www.syngbio.org.

Digging up the seagrass at Studland

By | Studland Bay, The Seahorse Trust News | No Comments

Dear all I have just posted a video taken by the trust’s volunteer divers at Studland on Friday the 7th of September. It shows the antics of a ‘responsible’ boat owner who had dug up a large clump of seagrass at Studland as he anchored up his boat.

After filming we chatted with this person who did not care about the seagrass, seahorses or anything as long as he could anchor his boat at Studland which apparently he had done for 30 years. Judging by his seamanship skills he hadn’t learnt much in that time. The anchor chain he laid out was tens of metres long and the clump of newly dug up seagrass was 2 metres wide and 1.5 metres high and full of dislodged seagrass as can be seen by the fresh roots exposed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMm9g9ms8us&feature=youtu.be

Please let the marine management Organisation know your feelings after you have seen this through their website which is

http://www.marinemanagement.org.uk/licensing/index.htm

Magic Wand Charity raises money for the trust

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The Magic Wand Charity; Merlin Entertainments own charity (Merlin own the SEALIFE Group amongst many others) recently had a stock sale at their head office in Poole in Dorset to raise money for The Seahorse Trust and for Magic Wand.

The sale was a fantastic success and they raised an amazing £300 which will be spilt equally between the trust and Magic Wand

Nicky and the team did a brilliant job and we would like to offer them all our heartfelt thanks for this

Check out the Magic Wand Charity on http://www.merlinsmagicwand.org/

See below pictures of their great sale

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Nicky Merlin's Magic Wand

National Biodiversity Network

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The National Seahorse Database is now listed on the Joint Nature Conservancy Councils (JNCC) National Biodiversity Database as a contributing Organisation.

The Seahorse Trust runs The British Seahorse Survey and runs The National Seahorse Database.

You can see our listing and learn more about the NBN on http://data.nbn.org.uk/organisation/organisation.jsp?orgKey=10721

 

Online petition

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Dear all,

check out our website and online petition (under conservation on this site). With our partners in the Save Our Seahorses campaign; we have launched an invite to the people of China to help us sort out the traditional medicine trade.
https://www.theseahorsetrust.org/traditional-medicine-trade.aspx#signup
We are aiming to gather 1 million signatures by the end of 2013, please sign up and send it off to all your social media connections, we need this to go viral with this, so send it far and wide.
Have a look on the Eden Channel tonight (Thursday the 24th of August) for Kealan’s Seahorseman documentary, I am sure you will not hesitate to be shocked by the extent of this trade !!
I strongly feel that we cannot keep telling the the people of the East what to do, so we have opted for this invitation to join forces to make a difference. It will work but we need the global community to sign up to it, so please please send it far and wide and help jus to hit the one million signature mark.

THERE ARE IN EXCESS OF 150 MILLION SEAHORSES SOLD IN THE TRADITIONAL MEDICINE TRADE EVERY YEAR, THIS IS NOT SUSTAINABLE !!

Dried seahorses for sale in China, during the Olympics

KD 5