Cornish sea horses give birth (From Falmouth Packet)

Cornish sea horses give birth

3:59pm Tuesday 17th August 2010 in News By Stephen Ivall

Delighted keepers at Newquay’s Blue Reef Aquarium are celebrating the birth of more than 40 rare seahorses.

The babies are members of what’s believed to be the world’s largest species of seahorse - the Australian Big-Belly - which can reach lengths in excess of 20cms.

The seahorse parents were themselves born as part of a captive breeding programme and Blue Reef is one of the few aquariums in the country which has been able to successfully breed this particular species of seahorse.

“The parents only arrived a few weeks ago from a seahorse farm in Tasmania. We were very surprised to find babies born so soon after their arrival. They must be happy here,” explained curator Matt Slater.

“However it was still a massive thrill when we came in to find the tiny babies swimming around the display. They have now given birth to a second batch and they are also doing extremely well.

Several juveniles are on display while more newborn babies are being looked after in the aquarium’s quarantine facility.

The seahorse is unique in the animal kingdom in that it is the male rather than the female which carries the babies and gives birth to them via a special brood pouch on their stomach.

Male big-bellied seahorses puff-up their pouch to show off to the females. In the world of the seahorse, the bigger your pouch, the more impressive you are to the females.

There are just over 30 species of seahorse in the wild, all of which are now under threat from a variety of sources. These include loss of habitat, pollution, the souvenir trade and traditional Far East medicine - believed to account for the deaths of more than 20 million seahorses annually.

The big-bellied seahorses at the Blue Reef Aquarium are part of a captive-breeding programme which aims to ease the pressure on wild populations.