We are attending a meeting tomorrow at Poole to discuss Studland Bay becoming a Marine Conservation Zone. It has been a very long very slow process but we have kept going and kept pressure on to make this highly vulnerable site protected. The seagrass has fragmented and is being destroyed and the seahorse numbers have crashed from 40 in 2008 down to 4 in 2013 (non so far this year), despite The Seahorse Trust getting them protected under the Wil…life and Countryside Act in 2008. We know the problems facing the seahorses and the seagrass but to date the authorities have refused to do anything to protect the site (despite the law).
We hope the making of Studland into a Marine Conservation Zone will be the start of a management process to try and restore this beautiful bay so the seahorses and seagrass can thrive again. The donations below and others we receive (from individuals and organisations like the Sealife Centres) mean that we can get on with this vital job; every bit of the sea or countryside that is lost, is lost forever. We hear about rainforests needing protection, which is vital to the planet but the seagrass meadows are our underwater rainforests (equally vital to the planet) with a stunning array of species living in them. As Ben from Project Seagrass (please see our facebook page) says they are vital to our planet as carbon sinks, wave diffusers to stop coastal erosion and as homes to a multitude of species.
Again thank you for your incredible support without you we would not have got this far, your donations have allowed us to undertake research and to lobby those that need to listen, if we had not lobbied so hard we would not be having this meeting tomorrow and we need to make them listen to make this beautiful bay preserved for the future of our planet.
Every year thousands of River Dolphins are killed illegally in Brazil. This is a country that is hosting a major football competition and yet its authorities let this happen.
Please use your voice to help this become a thing of the past.
Go to the WDC link below and look at their video and then please sign their petition to stop this wholesale slaughter. THANK YOU.
http://uk.whales.org/campaigns/stop-illegal-killing-of-river-dolphins
After years of requests from the international community Beijing recognizes that the hunting and traduing of 420 species is a “global threat”. The ban involves pandas, rhinos, pangolins and sharks: used in traditional medicine or considered “treats” these animals are in danger of disappearing. The penalties for violating the new law range from 3 to 10 years in prison.
Eating or hunting rare animals for food is now a criminal offense in China. The government has approved an amendment to the Criminal Code which sets 3 to 10 years in prison for those who “knowingly eat or trade “, the meat of the 420 species currently at risk across the Chinese territory. They include the giant pandas, golden monkeys, Asian black bears and pangolins. Shark fins and rhino horns, key elements in traditional Chinese medicine have also been banned.
The decision was made this morning by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, which represents the national parliament. After years of requests from the international community, the Standing Committee defined the hunting of endangered species a “global threat”. In addition, the Commission has “blamed” wealthy Asian consumers who, thanks to a high volume of cash, foment trade in rare animals for personal purposes.
In Asian tradition, some breeds are associated with well-being and vigor. Giant turtle soup ensures a long life, bear’s paw helps sexuality, and powdered rhino horn is used to heal fever, epilepsy, malaria, poisoning and abscesses. Given these beliefs, the hunting and trading of these animals are very popular activities: announcing the reform today, state news agency Xinhua claims that “up to now those involved in these practices went unpunished”.
You can find a list of the protected species which includes one species of seahorse below at http://jpkc.ahut.edu.cn/hjpj/dwml.html
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
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.
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