The Seahorse Trust News

Dear all Lila and her sisters Phoebe and Thia have been really busy lately, not only have they raised another £20 from the sale of their Hammabead Seahorses (even one done by Thia in the colours of The Seahorse Trust) they have also visited the beautiful Seahorse Fountain in the Jewish Quarter of Rhodes Town on the stunning island of Rhodes. We are so grateful to Lila and her dedicated team who work so hard to raise the profile and plight of seahorses. It gives us hope here at the trust that the next generation will carry on caring for these endangered enigmatic animals. Thank you to them and to Mum and Dad for allowing us to show these pictures.

There is a new interesting paper written by Steff Lamb on the difference in behaviour of Short Snouted Seahorses in captivity and in the wild. Steff wrote this as her MSc write up. She did the captive work at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth and we helped her on the wild work. Well worth a read. It is on our conservation page under the downloads https://www.theseahorsetrust.org/research.aspx

London Sea Life Centre put on an amazing event for Father’s Day weekend and raised a staggering £442 to go towards The Seahorse Trust’s work. Bex and Jenny and the events team organized this well-attended event some time ago and have worked so hard getting it together.

Amongst the incredible events they put on were:

• Name a seahorse – which was popular!
• A  ‘Guess how many babies in dad’s pouch’ competition with a male seahorse with a jar full of glass beads. Everyone loved it and the closest guess won a Snorkel with Sharks experience for 2.
• They sold seahorsey Father’s Day cards in exchange for donations.
• The did lots of daily seahorse talks during which they got a dad volunteer to come up and gradually dressed him in a silly seahorse costume as they were talking about the different body parts (we’ve got a tail, a crown, a snout, a pouch etc) And we gave a prize mug to all the volunteers.

It was an exciting weekend and there are already plans to repeat it next year.

Here at the trust we would like to offer a massive thank you to Bex and Jenny and to all the team at London and many thanks to Sea Life for their continued support for our work.

One of our supporters Lucy has organised a great art evening at the Café Parisien Portsmouth on Thursday the 15th of August, with donations going to the work of The Seahorse Trust. Please support Lucy’s hard work and pop along and support the project. Thank you so much to Lucy and the team for their amazing hard work and good luck with the evening.

Piddle Valley Vets at Puddletown near Dorchester kindly nominated the trust as their charity to raise money for and raised an amazing £174.19 to go towards our work. David Holah, established the surgery in 2011 and has always wanted to support charities especially wildlife ones that work in the local area.
Between David and his amazing team they worked hard to promote the work of the trust and raise the much needed funds and we would like to say a massive thank you to them. Without the likes of people like David and the team, the trust would not keep going and we could not keep doing our research, education and lobbying work to preserve seahorses and the environment. Thank you to David (pictured below) and everyone at Piddle Valley Vets.   http://www.piddlevalleyvets.co.uk/

Here at the trust we have just reached 600 members on our facebook page and we have supporters from all ages, including Lila one of our younger supporters. Lila and her Seahorse team kindly made some bead things to sell to raise money for the trust and its work and she has written a paragraph below saying why she loves seahorses. We have pasted all Lilas pictures and comments with permission from her Mum and Dad who we would like to thank for encouraging her in her love for the natural world.

My name is Lila and i have been rasing money at school to save the seahorses. I have loved seahorses since I was two and a half. I went to a sealife sanctuary and saw them and found them fascinating. I like seahorses because they are so different from any other animal and they are quite cute. I think that seahorses should be saved because they are an amazing creature and if we lose them then it’s another species gone. As well as this they don’t get as much attention as most other endangered animals do because they are so small. I don’t think that it is fair to kill seahorses for us especially becuase they have not done anything to harm us.  One of my favourite things about seahorses is thier tale and thier long nose.

Dear all, the kindness of people in the conservation of a species is always a pleasant experience for us and none more so than when Mel approached us to offer her support by offering to donate 10% of her profits to the work of the trust, Mel makes jewellery with small seahorses charms on and by buying her bracelets it will directly help to fund our work. So please support Mel and the trust and have a look at her site at the link below. From us all at the trust I would like to thank Mel for her amazing offer. https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/157085372/cute-seahorse-beaded-charm-bracelet

A lucky Short Snouted Seahorse was released back to the wild yesterday after a co-ordinated team effort.

The male Seahorse was accidently caught in a Sand Eel net a week ago and the quick thinking fishermen decided to put it in a bucket and take it to the Blue Reef Aquarium in Portsmouth, rather than put it back into the sea. In this

The male Seahorse was accidently caught in a Sand Eel net a week ago and the quick thinking fishermen decided to put it in a bucket and take it to the Blue Reef Aquarium in Portsmouth, rather than put it back into the sea. In this case it probably saved the seahorses life because there were lots of seagulls trying to get some of the sand eels from the net and would most likely have eaten the seahorse. Normally we encourage fishermen to put the seahorses straight back into the sea (after recording the details for us) but with such a risk, in this case it was the right thing to do.

All the staff at Blue Reef aquarium were fantastic, they put the seahorse into quarantine and made sure he was healthy and feeding.

Meanwhile Jenny Mallinson who is a visiting researcher with the National Oceanography centre at Southampton University and who holds a Marine Management Organisations license to handle seahorses got all the various organisations and individuals co-ordinated together and a release plan was organised.

The Seahorse Trust who set up and run the British Seahorse Survey and co-ordinate the National Seahorse Database contacted the aquarium and provided advice on the keeping of the seahorse and how we could all release him back to the wild.

It was decided to release him into a secret location because we were not sure exactly where he came from. There are other seahorses at this location and we know there is suitable food and habitat for him to live in.

As the pictures show, Jenny’s partner Dr Ken Collins released the seahorse back into the water and he swam off into the weeds, hopefully to set up home with the other seahorses in the area.

Thank you to everyone involved but especially the quick thinking fishermen whose actions probably saved this amazing little seahorse from the beaks of very hungry seagulls.

Its a very busy season with events, last Thursday night (the 27th) Weymouth Sea Life Centre put on their first conservation evening and it was a great success. The heavens opened and it rained all night but it did not dampen spirits. The trust attended the event and volunteer Maxine manned the stand along with trust Director Neil.
The Shark Trust, Dorset Wildlife Trust and many others put on stands and music was provided by Wessex radio. Trust volunteer and animal keeper at Weymouth Sea Life Centre Lauren Timson was one of a massive team of Sea Life staff organisers for the event and we would like to say a massive thank you to everyone at Weymouth who went to a lot of trouble to make everyone feel welcome and to put on this event which they hope will become yearly.

Trust volunteer, Dr Eva Durant kindly represented the trust at the annual Seahorse Challenge Swim held by the East Dorset Open Water Swimming Club on the 23rd of June at Knoll Beach in Studland Bay. There were 165 swimmers completing the 3 kilometre course and only a small handful retired from the race. This is the third time this fantastic swimming club have supported The Seahorse trust and they kindly raised £232 towards our research work which was amazing and we would like to thank them so much for supporting us again. From everyone’s comments the race was well organised and a lot of fun despite the weather. As well as our representative Eva, Vince Classen the British Long Distance Swimming Association President presented the awards and his wife Jacky has vowed to join the fun next year. Thank you so much to Bob, the club and the team for putting on this amazing event and thank you so much for supporting the trust.