2023-10-13 15:38:59
Los seahorses They are a species threatened by climate change, overfishing and poaching, which trap more than sixty million specimens a year to use them mostly for traditional Asian medicine, CSIC researcher Miquel Planas explained to Efe.
According to Planas, principal investigator in the CSIC’s Marine Ecology and Resources group, it is expected that these animals, with the increase in ocean water temperatures caused by climate change, some species that are not found beyond Holland or Great Britain , “moving further north.”
But among their greatest threats, according to the researcher from the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), seahorses or seahorses (Hippocampus) have a series of recipes of traditional Chinese medicine to which a series of health benefits are attributedwhich “sometimes has scientific corroboration and other times not.”
The action of the mafias
The mafias work in areas where there are significant populations of seahorses, such as Peru or southern Portugal, where “they carry out illegal captures of specimens.”
“In Spain, specifically in Malaga, thousands of seahorses have been seized of illegal catches that were stuffed and ready to be sent to China for traditional medicine,” he says.
Another danger for this species is the “anthropogenic destruction of its habitats”, such as areas of macroalgae or marine plants such as Posidonia or Zostera. Planas explains that “Every half hour, the equivalent of a football field of these plant communities disappears worldwide.”
In Spain, specifically in Malaga, thousands of seahorses from illegal catches have been seized
To preserve the species, the NGO Oceánidas promotes project Save Little Big Seahorsewhich has the advice of Miquel Planas, and aims to conserve the existing populations of seahorses with the help of a Network of Marine Watchers, which has more than 2,000 divers.
Andalusia and Galicia
“The Mediterranean is much more susceptible to the appearance of these animals”explains the researcher, and points out that since the Oceanids, up to six colonies of seahorses have been reported in Andalusia and also in the Galician Atlantic.
However, he emphasizes, “it is important” to continue investing in research to find out where seahorses are located, since according to the expert, there are still “not many observations in the Cantabrian Sea”, which limits the protection of the species.
According to the entity, currently the seahorse It does not appear in the Spanish catalog of threatened species due to lack of data and studieswhich include their situation and the number of specimens of the species, which “in the last fifty years has been almost reduced by half.”
In Spain there are two species of seahorse, the ‘Hippocampus hippocampus’ and the ‘Hippocampus guttulatus’.
Although more than 50 species of seahorses in the world -most in areas of the Indian and Pacific oceans-, in Spain there are only two, the Hippocampus hippocampus and the Hippocampus guttulatus.
These species live at shallow depths, normally up to ten meters, on the contrary, he says, “in Australian waters they can be seen up to one hundred meters.”
One of the greatest curiosities that these syngnathids harbor – a family to which seahorses belong along with pipefish and water dragons – is that “They are the only species where the male takes care of the eggs and embryos“, they also share the work since “the female begins to produce a new group of eggs when the male is still incubating the previous ones.”
EThe seahorse lives between four and five yearsbut their reproduction is limited since the cycles occur between spring and autumn and “they only lay about 350 eggs each time,” adds the researcher.
Besides, They are the only fish that swim vertically“they have evolved in this way since it makes it easier for them to camouflage themselves in seagrass meadows,” explains Planas and adds that they are capable of “blimicking and hiding from their predators, usually larger fish.”
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