Dear all, Trust Patron Chris Packham is in Malta highlighting the yearly massacre of the migratory birds that fly over the islands every spring. From the 21st to the 26th of April at 9pm UK time he is going to be doing a nightly video diary to highlight this appalling massacre.

Check them out at http://www.chrispackham.co.uk/

Malta has the highest density of illegal hunters (up to 10,000) in Europe and what they are doing is wrong and illegal and has to stop; this affects everyone. The very birds being shot in Malta are our spring and summer nesting birds here in the UK and they are not getting a chance to reach us depleting our own bird species and diversity. Every bird shot is depletes our ecosystem and this is happening throughout Europe where the birds migrate to.

The killing of migrating birds in spring is expressly forbidden by the European Union, but Malta’s government continues to allow turtle dove and quail to be shot at this crucial time of year. As well as shooting at these birds, many Maltese hunters also use the spring hunting season as an opportunity to target rare and protected species of birds that breed in Europe, such as Pallid Harriers, Cuckoos and Bee-eaters. Everything is being shot even birds that are sitting on the ground at night are ‘hunted’ by torch light and shot.

Along with over 60% of the Maltese population, BirdLife Malta believes it is time for this to stop. 45,000 Maltese people (more than 10% of the population) have signed a petition calling for a referendum where they will be able to vote to end spring hunting once and for all.

To help stop the massacre of birds every year make a donation to help pay for video cameras, telescopes, binoculars and other equipment so the volunteers can do their job, please you’re your donation through  https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/stop-spring-hunting-on-malta  There is also a great deal more information on the Indiegogo site and watch Chris’s nightly blogs on his website.

Please make this appeal go viral, send it out to every contact, twitter account and Facebook page you belong to. Help make stopping the slaughter a reality, make this the last year ever that the Maltese Archipelago becomes a Killing Fields

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

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.

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