The Seahorse Trust News

Amazing artwork by 7 year old Maria
28-11-2012

Here at the trust we are always pleased to receive feedback from seahorse fans from all around the world and this morning we received this amazing picture by 7 year old Maria from Glasgow, Scotland. As well as this colourful picture of seahorses we also received a seahorse shaped notebook handmade by Maria and she has kindly saved up her birthday money and sent us £10 towards our work.

Without the amazing support by seahorse fans like Maria we could not do our work and we would like to thank her for thinking of the seahorses when she got her birthday money. We will make sure her money will go towards the work we do in conserving British seahorses, which are also found around Scotland. Earlier this year both types of seahorse, the Spiny and the Short Snouted were protected in Scotland which the trust helped to put into place.

Thank you Maria for your amazing support.

I just wanted to say a massive thansk to Blue Planet Aquarium at Ellesmere, who kindly donated £405.50 towards the work of the trust. This money will be put towards our British Seahorse conservation work and without the generosity of people like Blue Planet we would not be able to do this. Thank you to them all for their hard work in rasing this. www.blueplanetaquarium.com

Ben Toulson and the team from Exeter Universities Expedition Society are planning a terrestrial survey of Koh Rong Samelon in Cambodia as part of the widening overall survey and conservation of this amazing area. Ben has put together a Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/expeditioncambodia
that gives others the chance to get involved with this incredible work. there is still the possibility to also get involved with the marine seahorse survey and research as well by going to Project Abroads website at
http://www.projects-abroad.co.uk/volunteer-projects/conservation-and-environment/cambodia/

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

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.

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

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.

This amazing piece of video was taken by diver Cat Briggs, showing a 6 month old juvenile female Short Snouted Seahorse. This little seahorse would have been born this year in 2012 and is very well hidden amoungst the marine algae. It was not easy to spot her in amongst the rocks and weeds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLeDNWO8Gz4

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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