Diving with seahorses

Hello everybody and welcome to my newest blog post! In my last blog I wrote about my first encounter with a Dugong, check it out here if you haven’t read it yet!

As I promised, I’m going to write about seeing my first seahorse in this blog!

So, from the big dugong to the very small seahorse and I have to say, they're very small!

A 15-year old girl took a picture 

Actually, when I saw my first seahorse there were two of them, and I don’t know how I saw them, they were so small, maybe as small as my smallest fingernail! I knew that there were seahorses at the dive site, in the seagrass, because I had seen a picture of a seahorse which was maybe 10 - 15cm long. A nice, 15-year old girl with 600 logged dives found it and shared the picture with the diving center. A super young and very successful diver with a lot of specialities. On that day she had been very lucky. 

After months of searching, the silhouette of a seahorse!

After I knew 100% that there were seahorses there, I was always searching for them, but I never found them. 

It took me months until my day came, when I saw the baby seahorses. They were so little that I couldn’t even take a picture of them. I just had my action cam with me, so I made a video of their silhouette at least!

Some weeks later, divers found 9 - 11 more baby seahorses in the same area of seagrass. It was amazing to watch them. They were at a shallow depth of around 1m and moved with the waves of the sea.

Then finally - a 20cm seahorse!

One year later, at another divesite, I got to see my first big seahorse! Somebody measured the seahorse at 20cm. I saw this one pretty often and it wasn’t alone but with two others. They were a bit different in size and color, but looked similar. I saw them all at the same time!

Things to know about seahorses:

• Seahorses are fish, but they are unique in their appearance. They look more half horse, half worm. 


• Together with other species, they are part of the syngnathidae family.


• They are the only animal genus in which the male carries the unborn offspring. The female lays the eggs which they deposit in the male's ventral pouch. There, the eggs are fertilized. 


• Depending on the species, the females lay between 150 - 2000 eggs in the pouch of the male. From 10 days to several weeks, the male incubates the eggs, but just 0.5% of the babies survive.
  

How many logged dives did you have when you saw your first seahorse? What fascinates you about seahorses? 

Let me know in the comments below!

Written by
Semra

Date
20th February 2019

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peter schneider on Feb 21st 2019
Nice one, nature is full of wonders, ...if you are ready to keep your eyes and mind open!