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John_Brandt

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Is This the World's Smallest Seahorse?

John Pickrell
National Geographic News
July 31, 2003


If you were a male seahorse, you'd certainly have had reason to kick back and relax on father's day. Ranging in size from smaller than human fingernail to more than 30 centimeters (about a foot) in length, seahorse dads have had the tables turned and—unlike other vertebrates—bear the burden of pregnancy.

And that burden is typically heavier than any human mum might have to endure: wild seahorse dads can carry anywhere between just ten to more than one thousand babies. What's more, they spend nearly all of their (on average) two- to three-year lives pregnant.

"It's a hard life for a male," said Sara Lourie, seahorse biologist with the Project Seahorse marine conservation team, based at McGill University in Montreal. "In the species that have been studied, males always get pregnant again within a day or two after giving birth."

Lourie and tropical marine biologist John Randall of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii have discovered the smallest of all seahorse fathers. As detailed in a recent issue of the journal Zoological Studies, the scientists have described a new species of seahorse smaller than some human fingernails.


030731_seahorse.jpg

Hippocampus denise, an Indonesian species of the pygmy seahorse, is the world's smallest seahorse, and among the world's smallest vertebrates. Hippocampus denise is no longer than 16 millimeters (about six-tenths of an inch) from its snout to the tip of its tail, though some pregnant males as small as 13 millimeters (about one-half an inch) in length have been recorded.

Top photograph by Denise Tackett/Project Seahorse; bottom photograph by Joerg Adam/Project Seahorse


The species, Hippocampus denise, is no longer than 16 millimeters (about six-tenths of an inch) from its snout to the tip of its tail, though some pregnant males as small as 13 millimeters in length have been recorded.

In fact, it was so small that seahorse experts had previously believed it to be the young of the next smallest species, Hippocampus bargibanti, adults of which are at least 50 percent bigger.

The tiny orange-colored animal is found in coral reefs surrounding idyllic eastern Indonesian islands. Not only is it the smallest seahorse yet described, but also falls amongst the ranks of the world's most miniature vertebrates.

Britain's mammal society argues that the smallest mammal is the Savi's Pigmy Shrew, Suncus etruscus, which measures just 36 to 53 millimeters (1.5 to 2 inches) in length. The smallest fish—a type of goby, Trimmaton nanus—is only slightly smaller than H.denise at 8 to 10 millimeters in length, said Lourie. "It may not be physically possible to get much smaller than this…especially in seahorses, as having young developing in the body could be constraining," she said.

Pygmy seahorses, which are typically ten times smaller than non-pygmy relatives, were first discovered in the late 1960s and this is the third to be described. The animals live on soft coral in Asia and the Pacific.

"Due to the physical structure of the host [coral], it is an advantage to be small," said independent seahorse expert and biologist Rudie Kuiter, in Seaford, Australia. "To get away from predators it's easy to move [through the coral] from one side to the other in one simple move," he said.

Lourie, who was compiling a seahorse identification book in the late 1990s, first became aware that a new species might exist when diver and photographer Denise Tackett sent her images of seahorses she didn't recognize. Her curiosity piqued, Lourie—who's now studying the relatedness of South East Asian seahorse populations for her doctorate—decided to see if she could find the animal herself. During an Indonesian research trip in spring 2001, Lourie got the opportunity to join the crew of a dive boat for a week in the Flores Sea, and decided to take a chance.

It was on one of these dives, examining the kinds of delicate, deep-water coral the animal was seen associated with in Tackett's photographs, that Lourie spotted a pair. "It was pretty unbelievable," she said, "I was stunned and amazed…as I'd never really believed we would find such a small creature." One specimen collected on that trip, and two subsequently collected near the Pacific islands of Palau and Vanuatu, had young seahorses inside them, proving that they were not the young of another species. Lourie and Randall decided to name the animal H.denise after Denise Tackett, whose 1997 photographs were the key to the find.

Though it's impossible to predict the conservation status of the new species without estimating population sizes and rates of decline, said Lourie, it is known that 46 percent of the reefs around Indonesia are classified as highly threatened. Habitat destruction, and overfishing for use in traditional Chinese medicine, are the biggest threats to seahorses, she said. Project Seahorse most recently estimates that total global consumption of seahorses is 20 million or more annually, she added.

"Many time people identify a new species and six months later it's reclassified as something else," said Juan Romero Director of Animal Husbandry at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, England. "This absolutely appears to be a new species, which hasn't been seen before, because it's so small." However, Kuiter has some nagging doubts that these specimens are H.bargibanti juveniles. Juveniles often look very different to adults, and seahorses can reproduce before fully grown, said Kuiter. Analysis of DNA samples is needed to confirm the classification, he said.

NOTE: Denise & Larry Tackett will be the Keynote Speakers at MACNA XV. Look here - http://www.lmas.org/M15/macna_xv.htm
 

John_Brandt

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You cannot buy this fish anywhere, and may never be able to puchase one nor any seahorse smaller than 10cm (approx 4 inches) given the proposal to CITES prepared by Amanda Vincent of Project Seahorse http://www.projectseahorse.org. See below and thanks to Svein Fossa for assisting me in preparing this response. Svein will be representing OFI at the upcoming CITES Animals Committee meeting in Geneva.



AC19 Doc. 16.2

CONVENTION ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN ENDANGERED SPECIES
OF WILD FAUNA AND FLORA (CITES)


___________________

Nineteenth meeting of the Animals Committee
Geneva (Switzerland), 18-21 August 2003

Seahorses and other members of the family Syngnathidae (Decision 12.54)

UNIVERSAL MINIMUM SIZE LIMIT FOR SEAHORSES

1. This document has been prepared by the Chairman of the working group on Syngnathids.

2. Decision 12.54, adopted at the 12th meeting of the Conference of the Parties and directed to the Animals Committee, states that:

The Animals Committee shall identify a minimum size limit for specimens of all Hippocampus species in trade as one component of an adaptive management plan, and as a simple precautionary means of making initial non-detriment findings in accordance with Article IV of the Convention.

3. A universal minimum permissible size of 10 cm (height) should be set for all seahorses in international trade, thus greatly facilitating the job of making interim non-detriment findings (NDFs) under their new Appendix-II listing.

4. The ultimate goal of an Appendix-II listing is to ensure that international trade is not detrimental to wild populations of a listed species. For seahorses (Hippocampus spp.), meeting such a goal may take considerable time and effort because of uncertainty about trade levels, population status, and management options. The global community can, however, immediately adapt and adopt general conservation and management paradigms as important interim measures toward NDFs. Such approaches set up a model of adaptive management, whereby new information contributes to revising the way in which Parties regulate their international trade, eventually allowing confidence in NDFs.

5. A universal minimum permissible height (minHt) appears to be both biologically appropriate and socially acceptable as a means of making interim NDFs for seahorses, until Parties are able to define management tools more specifically. Ideally, the minHt should be set so as to allow animals to reproduce before being caught, thus reducing the problem of recruitment overfishing (Nowlis, 2000). Currently, the number of older juvenile seahorses in trade, particularly for use as curios or in patent medicines, bodes poorly for population recovery from overexploitation. Indeed, detailed studies of Hippocampus comes in the central Philippines make a clear case for recruitment overfishing (Vincent et al., unpublished data). Consultation with multiple stakeholders and managers (1) has revealed that most favoured minimum permissible size limits as a means of regulating seahorse fisheries (K. Martin-Smith et al., in review).

Footnote: (1) Fishermen in the Philippines, traditional Chinese medicine traders in Hong Kong SAR, aquarium professionals in North America, a technical working group in the Philippines, international fisheries biologists, and a CITES technical workshop on the conservation of seahorses and other syngnathids held in 2002

6. The recommendation to propose 10 cm as the minHt reflects a compromise between the need to avoid recruitment overfishing, and the desire to sustain trade for dependent people. Plotting maximum reported height at maturity (Htm) (2) beside the maximum reported height for all species of seahorses indicates that a minHt of 10 cm height should be sufficient to permit reproduction in 27 of 32 species (3) , including all six species listed on Appendix II under Article II, paragraph 2(a) of the Convention (H. barbouri, H. comes, H. erectus, H. ingens, H. reidi and H. spinosissimus; Figure 1). Such a minHt would also permit continued trade in 22 species (Figure 1). A universal 10 cm minHt would, therefore, permit both reproduction and continued trade in 17 species, including many of the most heavily exploited species and all six species listed under Article II, paragraph 2(a) of the Convention at CoP12. This proposed minHt is slightly above the currently inferred maximum size at maturity for most species, in order to allow reproduction to occur.

Footnotes: (2) See Appendix 1 for notes on methodology.
(3) Only the 32 species mentioned in CoP12 Prop. 37 were used for this analysis. Data will need to be sought for new species, as these will also be included in Appendix II.


7. Further research is needed to determine whether the five larger species would be fully supported by this minHt. The Htm for the five large species (H. jayakari, H. kelloggi, H. kuda, H. subelongatus and H. trimaculatus) are currently estimated to be greater than 10 cm but the data are unreliable, drawn from very small sample sizes. Indeed, such Htm are likely to fall below 10 cm with further research, because Htm increases with increasing maximum height of the species (Figure 2), and the largest of the seahorse species with better data (H. abdominalis and H. ingens) have Htm that are well below 10 cm. In the meantime, however, the minHt would offer a first step towards management.

8. It is probable that the 10 smaller species of seahorses (maximum adult height less than 10 cm) would be excluded from international trade if this proposed minHt were adopted. Five of the ten species are not found in international trade at present: H. bargibanti, H. fisheri, H. lichtensteinii, H. minotaur, and H. sindonis. The other five very small species are very seldom found in international trade as it is: H. breviceps and H. zosterae (live trade), H. zebra (dried trade), H. camelopardalis and H. mohnikei (live and dried trades). Indeed almost all trade in H. zosterae is domestic, within the United States.

9. In recognition that it can be difficult to measure seahorse height when the tail is curled, we propose that the minHt of 10 cm be translated into a metric that is more easily assessed in all traded forms: the distance between the tip of the coronet and the posterior edge of the dorsal fin (trade height – Figure 3) for a seahorse of 10 cm height.

10. It should be noted that precedent has been set for this recommendation of a universal minimum size limit for many closely related species. In Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, for example, all but one species of coral trout are managed under a single minimum size limit; the exception matures at a substantially larger size than the others so has its own limit (QFMA, 1999). Such an exception might also work for seahorses if further research showed that one or two species were particularly different in their size at maturity, especially if they were morphologically distinctive or geographically isolated.

Future research

11. Further analysis and assessment would greatly enhance the effectiveness of the Appendix-II listing for seahorses when it is implemented in May 2004. Support should be found to undertake brief trade surveys of dried seahorses in a few large markets, in order to:

a) determine the sizes of seahorses in trade, so as to establish baseline data prior to the implementation of a minimum size limit and evaluate its biological and economic impact;

b) collect data on heights at maturity and at reproduction (judged by full brood pouches) for species with inadequate data, especially the five larger species; and

c) develop conversion factors to translate seahorse heights into trade heights, for easier management.

12. The results of the proposed brief new market surveys could be submitted at AC20 (early 2004) and used to reconsider decisions taken at AC19 about an appropriate universal minimum height or trade height in making non-detriment findings. Such analysis could also provide additional information to Parties wishing to embark (in the short or long term) on more specific and localized management for their national seahorse populations, the universal minimum height across all species serving as an effective but nonetheless interim means of making non-detriment findings.

References

Cai, N., Xu, Q., Yu, F., Wu, X., and Sun, G. 1984. Studies on the reproduction of the seahorse Hippocampus trimaculatus. Studia Marina Sinica 23: 92-100.

Froese, R., and Pauly, D. Editors. 2003. FishBase. World Wide Web electronic publication. http://www.fishbase.org, version 06 May 2003.

Kanou, K. and Kohno, H. 2001. Early life history of a seahorse, Hippocampus mohnikei, in Tokyo Bay, Japan. Ichthyological Research 48: 361-368.

Long, N.V. and Hoang, D.H. 1996. Biological parameters of two exploited seahorse species in a Vietnamese fishery. 1st International Conference in Marine Conservation, Hong Kong.

Lourie, S.A., Vincent, A.C.J. & Hall, H.J. 1999. Seahorses: An identification guide to the world's species and their conservation. London: Project Seahorse.

Martin-Smith, K.M., Samoilys, M.A, Meeuwig, J.J. and Vincent, A.C.J. in review. Collaborative development of management options for an artisanal fishery: seahorses in the central Philippines.

Nowlis, J.S. 2000. Short- and long-term effects of three fishery-management tools on depleted fisheries. Bulletin of Marine Sciences. 66: 651-662.

QFMA (Queensland Fisheries Management Authority). 1999. Queensland Coral Reef Fin Fish Fishery. Draft management plan and regulatory impact statement. Prepared by the Queensland Fisheries Management Authority with the Reef Fishery Management Advisory Committee.

Further resources

Lourie, S. 2003. Measuring Seahorses. Project Seahorse technical bulletin no.4. Version 1.0, May 2003. (available at http://www.projectseahorse.org).

Lourie, S.A., Vincent, A.C.J. and Hall, H.J. 1999. Seahorses: An identification guide to the world's species and their conservation. London: Project Seahorse. (available at http://www.nhbs.com).


Figure 1. Maximum recorded height and height at maturity (Htm) for 31 seahorse species (no data available on Htm for H. minotaur). The horizontal line indicates a possible universal size limit (MinHt) of 10 cm for the exploitation and trade of seahorse species.

Figure 2. Maximum reported height at maturity (Htm) versus maximum height for 31 species of seahorse (Hippocampus spp.; no data available on Htm for H. minotaur). Htm increases with the maximum height of the species. The data for the five species with Htm ≥ 11 cm (H. jayakari, H. kelloggi, H. kuda, H. subelongatus and H. trimaculatus) are unreliable (see text).

Figure 3. Standard length, height and trade height as measured on a seahorse.

AC19 Doc. 16.2 Annex

Methodological notes

Data on size at maturity for seahorses are somewhat patchy and imprecise. Where studies differed in their results, we took the largest value in an attempt to be precautionary. Htm in our analyses is therefore the maximum recorded Htm cited in any report on the species. Where clear data on size at maturity were lacking, we inferred height at maturity (Htm) to be the smallest recorded adult size (usually from Lourie et al., 1999).

In seahorses, maturity is commonly inferred too young. In general, size at maturity for a species or population is the size at which 50% of the animals have reached maturity (developed ripe gonads, Froese and Pauly, 2003). A problem for seahorses, however, is that the most commonly used (and somewhat subjective) determinant of sexual maturity is the presence of a fully developed brood pouch in the males. A second problem is that a developed brood pouch need not indicate physiological maturity. In H. trimaculatus, the first fully developed brood pouch appeared at 80-90 mm but dissection of the testes revealed the size at maturity to be 120 mm (Cai et al., 1984). A third problem arises with using smallest recorded pregnant males as a proxy of size at sexual maturity (e.g. Nguyen and Do, 1996); males may have matured some time before they mate, especially in exploited populations where seahorse densities may be low or the sex ratio skewed.

So few studies reported sex-specific lengths at maturity that we have had to assume that both sexes mature at much the same size. Methods for determining female maturity are even more varied than those for males, and include the size at which ovaries appear (e.g. Kanou and Kohno, 2001), the smallest recorded female with hydrated eggs (e.g. Nguyen and Do, 1996), and the smallest recorded female to release her eggs (e.g. Cai et al., 1984).

Please see the original documents with figures and graphs here: http://www.cites.org/eng/cttee/animals/19/index.shtml
 

brandon4291

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Is the micro-goby available for purchase? You can see why I would be interested, his total ammonia output would but measured in .00?mg/l which is making my mouth water. Feeding one would be very tricky, seems he would feed at the particulate level where colloidal supplements may work out.
 

John_Brandt

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Brandon,

I do not know if any Trimmatom spp. (it's spelled incorrectly in the article) are collected and/or imported to the USA. There are Trimma spp. that are imported, but not in any great numbers.

This is rather unfortunate because both of these goby genera are very small fish that would be excellent for nano-reefs. In some ways, the collectors are not keeping perfect pace with the desires and demands of modern marine aquarists.

Given the range of Trimmatom nanus in the far western Indian Ocean (fairly deepwater Chagos & Maldives), it is not likely that they are showing up in the trade.
 

brandon4291

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neat! and a food source that is rather slim-pickins for all but the smallest larvae/fry would sustain them nicely... gut-loaded nauplii would be a steak dinner to a fish whose full-grown length is one cm :) Thats nice to know about their geography and food possibilities, something Ill keep in mind for future opportunities.

Thanks for the heads up John,

B
 

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