About Seahorses

Seahorses are powerful ambassadors for ocean health.

Get it right for seahorses and we will help save coastal seas. These remarkable fishes are known for their odd shapes, male pregnancy and long-term pair bonds. About 45 species, from little to large, live along the world’s tropical and temperate coastlines. Seahorses are threatened by non-selective fishing gears, including bottom trawls and seine nets, which can capture seahorses and many other unintended species. Seahorses are also threatened by the damage and destruction of their coastal habitats. These same threats are assaulting most life in our seas.

Saving seahorses, saving the seas

Our Project Seahorse actions will safeguard iconic seahorses… and thousands more species too. We place seahorses at the centre of our conservation efforts because their future will respond to many layers of pressures and many layers of solutions. By protecting seahorses and their habitats, we can also help protect the coastal ecosystems on which many other species depend.

We should conserve seahorse populations for many reasons. Foremost among them is that these extraordinary fishes are, quite simply, marvellous and magical.

Why seahorses?

If seahorses cannot inspire people to care about ocean conservation, what will? There are also strong biological, ecological, and economic reasons to care about seahorses. Biologically, their extraordinary life history — for starters, only the male becomes pregnant — provides us with an unusual opportunity to challenge our understanding of sex roles. Ecologically, their voracious predation on small bottom-dwelling organisms means they help structure coastal ecosystems. Economically, seahorses are traded for use in traditional medicines and as ornamental curios, providing income for some fishing communities around the world.  Culturally, seahorses are creatures of storytelling and artistic inspiration around the world.

Particularly vulnerable

We know that seahorses are particularly vulnerable to pressures on the ocean. These fish are patchily and sparsely distributed, without much adult mobility to connect populations. Their limited mobility and reliance on camouflage offer little protection from non-selective fishing gears. They invest considerable effort in producing relatively few young, certainly compared with the millions produced by many other fish species, limiting population rates of recovery. Their highly structured social system, in the form of pair bonding, means that disrupting a population will reduce their reproductive output. Their long-term fidelity to small areas means that habitat damage and degradation are significant problems for the most threatened species.

Learning more

While we know enough to act on seahorse conservation, much more remains to be learned about most species. The list is long, from the basic life history parameters (survival, growth, reproduction and movement) for most species through to their responses to pressures and remedial action (at different spatial and temporal scales). Such information would serve to refine and improve conservation action, as we work with communities around the world.

[Updated 06 October 2026]