Endangered Seahorses Released Into Underwater ‘Hotels’ To Rebuild Their Lives
By Mikelle Leow, 29 Sep 2022
Young White’s Seahorses (Hippocampus whitei) are living the suite life in a chain of ‘seahorse hotels’ in Botany Bay, Sydney. Lucky them! It’s a forced vacation, though—they’re checking in due to necessity, rather than for leisure.
The species, also known as the Sydney Seahorse, is the only threatened seahorse population and one of just two threatened species in the world.
On the whole, seahorses can’t swim very well and entwine their tails around corals or seagrass so as not to be swept away by currents. The White’s Seahorse species is even more in danger, since most of its homes in the Australian east coast were wiped out between 2010 and 2013.
Aquarists at the SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium have thus installed manmade habitats, dubbed ‘seahorse hotels’, to give the seahorses a roof over their heads while also reviving the population.
This week, 111 juvenile White’s Seahorses bred in captivity were released into the wild, where they found themselves in one of 15 hotels crafted out of net and steel.
The structures—laid out on the ocean floor—are envisioned to accommodate the growth of algae, corals, and sponges to create a comfortable living environment for the seahorses, allowing them to curl their tails around those features for support.
Eventually, the metal will erode, giving future generations a natural habitat they can thrive in.
Already, the team has ambitiously rolled out three designs, created by Dr Kate Dunn and her colleagues at UNSW’s Built Environment Design Futures Lab, to assess the seahorses’ preferred type of home. There’s the generic box, along with one shaped like a house, and one with a Nautilus shell-inspired façade reminiscent of nature.
As reported by Cosmos, the hotels even get some “landscaping” in the form of tufts of Posidonia seagrass, the preferred natural habitat of these seahorses. This seagrass is also increasingly rare, so scientists are inadvertently recovering more than one marine species.
The seahorse hotel project marks the third successful endeavor by the aquarium to breed, raise, and then release Sydney Seahorses into the wild.
To attract more key clientele, SEA LIFE would first have to grow the population. So it bred adult seahorses, who in turn birthed more young to grow up and live in the hotels.
All guests are also tagged prior to their release, allowing experts to observe their migration patterns and understand individual hotel preferences.
And hopefully, patrons will give a good review on Kelp.
[via Cosmos and Australian Geographic, video and screenshots via SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium]