Advancing marine conservation
Seahorses and their syngnathid relatives have provided a focus for efforts to ensure sustainable use of marine resources, with new international trade controls (CITES Appendix II) implemented in May 2004. We demonstrate how a study of international trade can be used to assess relative levels of threat and set domestic research and conservation priorities. Australia …
Collecting marine organisms for the discovery and development of pharmaceuticals has been perceived variously as sustaining and threatening conservation. Our initial expectations that marine bioprospecting might pose conservation challenges were largely not confirmed. Thousands of marine species have been collected for initial assessment, but usually only in very small amounts. Very few compounds are sufficiently …
Hippocampus comes is presently exploited at significant rates in the central portion of – and possibly throughout –its range. The species is traded in dried form for traditional medicine and alive for the aquarium trade. Here we provide the most current life history, abundance and distribution information available for H. comes. These data should be …
The life history of the long-snouted seahorse Hippocampus guttulatus was characterized using mark-recapture data collected within a focal study site and catch data from 53 additional sites in the Ria Formosa coastal lagoon, southern Portugal. Population structure in benthic habitats was characterized by high local densities (0·3–1·5 m−2), equal sex ratios and few juveniles <70 …
Grey, M., Blais, A.-M., Hunt, B. and A.C.J. Vincent. 2006. The United States of America’s international trade in fish leather, from a conservation perspective. Environmental Conservation 33(2):100-108.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892906003092… Read more
Management tools are needed to help regulate the international trade in seahorses (Hippocampus spp.) under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora. Given the limited understanding of seahorse population dynamics and fishing mortality, a single minimum size limit for all seahorse species appears to be a useful initial …
Seahorses (genus Hippocampus) are traded globally for use in traditional medicines, souvenirs and as aquarium fishes. Indications that the trade was expanding geographically in response to increasing demand in consuming nations prompted this first study of the seahorse trade in Latin America. In 2000, over 400 people related to the seahorse trade in Mexico, Central …
Mitochondrial control region (mtDNA CR) diversity within and among 6 seahorse populations associated with the Indo-Pacific Hippocampus kuda complex (H. kuda from India, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, H. fuscus from the Red Sea and H. capensis from South Africa) was compared to determine whether there was support for the hypothesis that seahorses are able …
The curio trade in marine fishes has not previously been quantitatively analysed. As a contribution towards understanding the scale and conservation impact of such trade we summarize import and export data from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for 1997–2001. At least 32 fish species were involved in the USA’s international trade in curios, …
Seahorses have the potential to be flagship species for estuarine conservation around the world and considerable concern has arisen over their declining abundance in the face of exploitation. All seahorses were recently listed on CITES Appendix II in recognition of threats posed by unsustainable trade. However, the efficacy of this measure and the development of …