GREAT SEAHORSE - ENVIRONMENT
News: With
overfishing, great seahorses bolt from Coromandel
What is in the news?
● Extensive fishing off the
Coromandel coast could be forcing the great seahorse
to migrate laboriously toward Odisha.
● The
shallow coastal ecosystem of the eastern Indian State may not be the new
comfort zone for the fish with a horse-like head.
● The
study was based on a specimen of a juvenile great seahorse, or Hippocampus
kelloggi, caught in a ring net and collected from the Ariyapalli fish landing center
in Odisha’s Ganjam district.
About the species:
● There
are 46 species of seahorses reported
worldwide.
● The
coastal ecosystems of India house nine
out of 12 species found in the Indo-Pacific, one of the hotspots of seahorse
populations that are distributed across diverse ecosystems such as
seagrass, mangroves, macroalgal beds, and coral reefs.
● These
nine species are distributed along the coasts of eight States and five Union
Territories from Gujarat to Odisha, apart from Lakshadweep and the Andaman and
Nicobar Islands.
● IUCN status: Vulnerable.
● CITES: Appendix ll.
Threats:
The
population of great seahorse is declining due to
● Overexploitation
for traditional Chinese medicines
● Ornamental
fish
● Destructive
fishing
● Fisheries
bycatch
● Despite
the ban on fishing and trading activities on seahorses from 2001, clandestine
fishing and trading still take place in India.
This
creates immense pressure on the seahorse populations that have a high
dependency on local habitats to maintain their extensive and long-life history
traits.
Migration:
● Seahorses
are poor swimmers but migrate by
rafting -- clinging to floating substrata such as macroalgae or plastic debris
for dispersal by ocean currents to new habitats for successful maintenance of
their population.
● However,
the 1,300 km northward migration of the great seahorse from Palk Bay and the
Gulf of Mannar to Odisha is likely a response to extensive fishing activities
around the southern coast of India.
● The
species is abundant off the Coromandel coast (Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu)
but is under extensive fishing pressure, with 13 million individuals caught per
year, the study said.
Conservation:
● The
increasing threats calls for increased monitoring of the coastal ecosystems of
India on the east coast for better conservation and management of the remaining
seahorse populations.
● But
the great seahorse is not migrating in large numbers, as the Odisha coast does
not have coral reefs or seagrass meadows that the species can call home, except
within the Chilika region.