I'm so obsessive about seahorses, I had 26 tanks filled with them in my residence

I noticed a seahorse for the primary time once I was 14. There’s something very unfishlike about the best way seahorses swim upright, and their continuously transferring eyes – it made me really feel fully in awe of them. Fifty-one years later, and that feeling has by no means gone away. Even now, if I’m on a dive and I see one, I discover it wonderful.

Seahorses are fish that don’t match into any class; they appear like an amalgam of numerous completely different creatures. They’ve horse-like heads, kangaroo-like pouches and prehensile, monkey-like tails – which regularly appear to have a thoughts of their very own – plus they’ll change color like a chameleon. It’s fairly exceptional.

My holidays are oriented round seahorses, as a result of each time I see one within the wild, I study one thing new. I’ve additionally efficiently bred 22 completely different species in captivity. This enabled me to develop a facial ID system the place you’ll be able to take a look at the traces and spots on both aspect of the seahorse’s head to establish it, so we will higher perceive and examine particular person seahorses within the wild.

At one level, I had 26 tanks of seahorses at residence. It was a four-storey home and there have been tanks in all places, however my spouse and stepchildren bought used to it. Fortunately, we stay close to a river so I’d exit each morning to fish for shrimp for them to eat. Generally, within the winter, I may very well be down there for a few hours every day, making an attempt to fill 4 massive buckets.

I used my assortment of seahorses to discovered the primary seahorse-only public aquarium, after which joined forces with the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth.

Individuals used to suppose seahorses mate for all times and that if one died, its associate by no means mated once more. I quickly debunked that fable, not just for seahorses in captivity but in addition by diving within the wild and figuring out people and who they had been mating with.

There are 65 different types of seahorses (two in UK waters), from very tiny ones which might be 1.5cm lengthy proper as much as the most important ever recorded, off the coast of Dorset, which was 34cm lengthy.

It is extremely troublesome to search out and examine seahorses within the wild as a result of, as stealth hunters who depend on not being seen by predators, they’re naturally cryptic. They’re so skinny from behind that when they’re aspect on after which they flip, they appear to vanish. They’ll vanish within the sea in seconds.

For many years, it was very troublesome to persuade the federal government that seahorses had been dwelling, respiration creatures that inhabit our waters proper up into Scotland. Individuals simply laughed at me. Some folks nonetheless suppose seahorses are legendary, the stuff of legends, like fire-breathing dragons.

I spent six years making an attempt to get seahorses protected, which lastly occurred within the UK in 2008. They now have one of the highest protections within the land. Many researchers are out within the ocean right now learning seahorses, and our data of those fascinating creatures is enhancing on a regular basis.

To undertake a seahorse by way of the Seahorse Belief, go to https://www.theseahorsetrust.org/adopt-a-seahorse-4/